With the Internet transforming from an information medium to a massive channel for marketing services, selling products and engaging in trade activities, it gets very important for any company to have a first-class website. However this high quality website with superior graphics and useful content is of no value unless it is always available to visitors from across the globe. Frequent downtimes and you are loosing customers for good.
That?s why, for professional hosting matters, your choice should be limited to firms that specialize in company web hosting services. Basically these firms understand the hosting requirements of company websites, either fully expressed or not, and have a culture for excellence.
Like any other type of hosting plans company web hosting packages also come with limited web space and network traffic. You?ll have to choose one package that fulfills these basic requirements. However, company web hosting requires that you be provided extra features and care from the hosting provider. The first among these is a guaranteed uptime. Your company web site should always be available online and the server hosting it shouldn?t go down for maintenance or any unexpected reasons for more than 0.01% of time in a month. That means we are looking for a server uptime no less than 99.99%.
It is very important to know the platform on which your website will be hosted. Right from the beginning you should know whether the company web hosting provider runs a Linux based hosting infrastructure or a Windows based. The choice of hosting platform will dictate what kind of database solutions and online scripts you can utilize for your website. Linux for example supports the popular MySql database and PHP scripting language while Windows on the other hand only allow for ASP scripts and MS Access or MS Sql Server database. So incase you have already built your applications and database solutions, you should limit your choice of company web hosting firms to those who provide the platform on their servers.
Apart from the basic requirements of web space and bandwidth, which should be made available over a network with superior uptime records, the company web hosting provider should also equip your hosting account with powerful tools and extra?s the make use of these hosting services. A user-friendly control panel sets the base for these essential features and extra?s. Many also provide a number of free scripts that let you add things like blogs, forums, shopping cart etc in a flash. The company web hosting provider should also have dedicated staff to help you with any of these applications.
Overall, the requirements for company web hosting differ a lot from those for personal website hosting and you should research your choices before selecting the right provider.