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What to Shop For

Web sites are hosted on computers called servers, which run software that allows them to send or “serve” your pages over the Internet to your users’ Web browsers. If your Web site’s server crashes, your entire site can drop offline, leaving your potential visitors staring at a blank page.

Because of this, the two most important questions when picking a Web host are:

1. How often do its servers crash? Look for uptime – the percentage of time its servers are up and running. Freehosting.net has a list of sites that independently track uptime percentages; the closer a host gets to 99.9 percent, the better.
2. When something does go wrong, how quickly can your host fix it?

When considering a host, talk to its existing customers. Ask the hosting company for a list of domains it currently hosts and contact those sites. Ask them how happy they are with the host’s service, how often their site goes down, and how quickly the hosting company fixes problems.

If something goes wrong, will your hosting company let you talk to a real person on the phone? Can you send the company an e-mail? Do you have to fill out a form on its Web site or hunt for the answer yourself in its help pages? Look for a Web host that offers you as many different support options and as much access to real people as possible, via phone, e-mail or online chat.

In addition, ask the host how many servers it maintains and how often it makes backup copies of the information stored on those servers. It’s rare, but possible, for a server to completely die, wiping out all the information stored on it – including your entire Web site. If that happens, a good host should have a copy of your site saved elsewhere so that the site can easily be restored.

Ask your Web host how it responds to a sudden surge in the number of visitors to a given Web site, also known as the site’s traffic. A server can only handle so many requests for Web pages at once. If too many people suddenly try to look at your site all at once, the server may crash, knocking your site offline. A good Web host will have plans in place to reduce the chance that this will happen.

Finally, check the host's own support message boards for customer comments. If your host doesn’t have support message boards, it could be a sign that it wants to avoid customer criticism. (On the other hand, some hosts offer message boards as a substitute for real tech support.)

> READ NEXT ARTICLE: Other Considerations

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