The Real Nightmare? No Support When You Need It
At Limestone Networks, we understand that issues don’t follow a schedule. That’s why...
Sep 08, 2016
When determining the right hosting platform for business needs, there are many factors that must be considered. Many businesses have fairly simple web hosting requirements. They will host a company website used to inform potential clients and patrons about their services, physical location, and operating hours. These websites serve a critical purpose, and can have a large impact on the success of the businesses they represent. Despite the importance web hosting will play for these sites, they do not have great resource requirements.
In comparison, businesses which rely more heavily on web presence than physical location for client interaction will have a greater need for hosting resources. For them, a website is their boardroom, their warehouse, and their storefront. For these organizations, under performing websites can leave the same impression on would-be clients as poorly kept or under-staffed brick-and-mortar locations. For this reason, many will require much more than a shared web hosting account to sufficiently handle their web presence.
Dedicated Servers are often described as the ultimate hosting service or the pinnacle of web hosting products. These single-tenant hosting solutions provide uncontested resources and a greater level of privacy (often perceived as security). The dedicated server is the backbone of the Internet, the infrastructure behind the information superhighway. For many organizations relying on the Internet as the foundation for their economies, dedicated servers are a requirement for operations to run effectively. Achieving the optimal mixture of premium hardware, network performance, and responsive support, with favorable pricing, is no simple task.
With 60,000 or so web hosting companies competing, pricing has generally trended in the favor of the dedicated server consumers, making the financial aspect of the equation more easily
obtainable. Premium hardware will have a different meaning to each company, based on their use case. For some, a large amount of disk storage is most important, for others, computing speed will be of greater consideration. Network performance, maximum uptime combined with minimal latency, is a more universal desire for companies, as is responsive on premise support (remote hands). Network lag, and slow or inadequate support response, is not going to satisfy many server customers.
When remote hardware or network issues happen, a minute can feel like an hour to the company who's website is down and is waiting for data center staff to bring them back online. It disrupts business, can cause loss of profit, and can be damaging to company reputation.
Seek out honest, organic feedback from the clients who have gone before. web hosting forums, social media, and Google can all be helpful in finding real, honest client reviews. Run network tests to see how IP addresses and file downloads perform from various locations where your clients would be accessing the network. It is fairly standard for dedicated server providers to have these readily available and accessible for the public to test. Don't let the lowest price trump the other considerations. That's not to say that a higher price equals higher quality, or vice versa. When your system is offline, however, price won't seem nearly as important, as business comes to a halt, and your sense of urgency towards the support techs is met with little regard.
There is no "best hosting provider." Find the one that best complements your business requirements, and then let the magic happen. Leave a positive review on a forum thread or on social media. The provider will notice, and may be further motivated to continue providing the high-level of service that earned your public praise. Quality providers will strive to meet client approval.