Ebits.ie

Apart from your domain name, your hosting is the most important part of your online business. In fact hosting and domain names go hand in hand, you can’t really have one with out the other. Think of hosting as your physical premises in the offline world. Would you sooner get a premises with cheap rent, but that will constantly be causing your trouble? Of course not so neither should you think the cheapest hosting is the best. Let me show you what you really need to know and let me give you a solution for your hosting needs.

Hosting and disk space

You need to make sure you get enough space to build your website. To be honest around 200mb – 500mb should be more than enough. However note that this is total space for all storage. Thus if you use web based email and don’t delete your web based email you can run out of space quickly.

When I say web based email I mean you are accessing your email @yourdomain.com thru a web interface rather than thru your email client such as outlook. What this means is that the mail is stored on your hosting account taking up space.

Hosting and Bandwidth

Next you need to make sure you get enough bandwidth. This is the amount of information that is transferred to and from your website. Let’s say you have a video and an audio file. The total size being 10mb. If 10 people watch and listen to the video and audio file that means you are using up 100mb of your bandwidth. If this continues for 10 days you will have used up 100×10 which is 1gb.  In this case if your hosting provider only allows you 2gb transfer per month, your site will go offline after 20 days. Not a good position to be in. The more visitors to your site the more bandwidth you normally use up.

Hosting and Control Panel

This is often something that most people don’t even know about. The control panel is where you go to control all your hosting details. For example setting up new email accounts, checking your website statistics and more. The industry standard is to use CPanel which is really really easy to use.  I have found that a lot of Irish web hosting firms use different control panels such as plex and hsphere which are very “clunky” to use. I have used both of the aforementioned control panels and have to say they are a disaster to work with. Make sure your hosting provider use’s cpane or if  not check the control panel to make sure it is easy to use.

When you have your own control panel you can set up emails and control your hosting – always ensure you get access to this. Some smaller companies or individuals may not allow you to do this and then charge you when you need to make changes.

Hosting and Domain names

Some accounts will only allow you to host one domain name per account. This means if you have 5 sites you need to buy 5 hosting accounts. There are however accounts that for a few dollars or euros extra will allow you to host a number of domains under the same account. Always go for this option!

Hosting and Uptime

Always talk to a support representative and ask them for details of uptime. This means how reliable the server is, no less that 99% or more uptime is acceptable.

Hosting and Support

Make sure you can get 24 hour support 7 days a week 365 days a year. This is essential as if something goes wrong over the weekend you need to be able to contact the support desk.

My recommendation?

Well I have my own hosting company which provides all of the above and more. The tech and customer support is fantastic. Take  a look at the offer and see if it matches what you are looking for.