Why 24-Hour Web Hosting Support Is Critical To Your Business

By: Amy Armitage
Submitted: 2009-09-16 17:11:14
Print this article | For publisher | Social Bookmarking
Rating:
 

A lot of Web hosting companies are offering unlimited disk space at cheap rates. Now, who wouldn’t want that? You benefit now and you benefit in the future, as you will no longer outgrow your hosting plan by embedding all those YouTube videos or high-resolution photographs from your Uncle Zadok on your personal site, or making all your corporate white papers available in full-color PDFs.

Unlimited bandwith, which once upon a time was called your transfer allowance, is also a no-brainer for both individuals and companies, as you are doubtless hoping to ramp your visitor numbers up from 312 a week to a million per day. Fact is, you’ll be ready for this with most plans, and most even offer easy-to-use site design tools as well as support for uploading your own home- or custom-made pages and media. You will certainly not see restrictions and limitations in this area very often, as it is the central raison d’etre for hosting companies. The problems usually arise in other areas, such as customer service, support and the responsiveness of your host to downtime and other problems.

What you don’t notice can hurt you. In many of the free hosting plans, there are hidden fees, up-front costs and other limitations that can quickly take the luster of that "great deal". You may not have noticed that you will be charged a hefty fee for your domain name, whereas you could have taken care of that yourself at any number of discount domain sites. The other thing you may not notice or may not give much importance to even if you do is the limited access to customer service and tech support personnel. This is something you simply cannot afford to overlook.

Some companies cut back on services that you might be expecting so that they can afford to make the unlimited offers of bandwidth and disk space. They may not have a toll-free number for customer support, and some many not provide a phone number at all, just a tack Web form or an e-mail contact. If you are crashing and burning when you try to upload to your site, or your server goes down, the last thing you need is to wait a day or two for a reply to your call for help.

Downtime, quite literally, can be a business killer. It is the Internet equivalent of your storefront being boarded up, or the block your building is on sinking into the La Brea tar pits, because the fact is, you just don’t exist anymore. To call this a frustrating situation is dramatically to minimize the possible effect. Losing a day’s sales, not to mention the opportunity to present your company to any number of new prospects, can be deadly for businesses, whether mature or new.

Customers, clients and even lookie-loos are exceptionally fickle, and the mood to shop, in particular, can really come and go without rhyme or reason. If it is not possible to access your site, these folks will find it way too easy to head elsewhere. You cannot afford this risk, much less the actual occurrence. You have to know that the site will be up and that any problems will be addressed immediately.

At first glance, you may not think it’s such a big deal that your host’s customer service and/or tech support are only available from 9am to 6pm (your time). The fact is, though, it is always noon somewhere on the planet, and that happens to be the reason you are on the Internet to reach the planet, to be available at any time to anyone, anywhere, right? You need to ensure that this is really the case before you pay your hard-earned dollars to any host.

A reputable hosting firm will have no qualms about giving you not just an estimate of their uptime percentage, but an actual report of their performance over the past month or year. You do not have to trust that the claims are accurate and not exaggerated, as there are third-party sites and auditing firms that report on the various hosting companies. Make sure to check the host’s claims against some of these neutral reports.

The bottom line is a simple, straightforward example of caveat emptor (let the buyer beware). Before you decide on a Web host, find out if you can get hold of customer service and tech support personnel on a 24/7/365 basis. Take your business elsewhere if you can’t, even if it costs a bit more. Think of the extra few dollars as insurance. Like any insurance, you can’t wait until you need it to buy it. Be prepared!

Amy Armitage is the head of Business Development for Lunarpages. Lunarpages provides quality web hosting from their US-based hosting facility. They offer a wide-range of services from linux virtual private servers and managed solutions to shared and reseller hosting plans. Visit online for more information.

Article source: Expert Articles

Most Recent Articles in Web Hosting category

  • Advantages of Using cPanel - By: Amy Armitage
    It has become such a common term that many people think "cPanel" is a generic name for any Web site control interface. In fact, it's a company name and a commercial product that hosting firms buy to give customers an easy way to maintain their sites and, not incidentally, reduce the workload for their customer service representatives and technicians...
  • What One Should Know About Web Hosting Services - By: Andrey Fidrya
    As it is known, it is impossible to launch a website without web hosting services. Usually people search for good quality and affordable rates. Trying to find a gold middle between two these important things they often got stuck. Despite the fact hosts and domain registrars are available in a wide variety today some people may find it difficult to launch an online business. To simplify this task for you and help you choose the best host we have decided to tell you how and where to search web hosting services. Simply keep on reading this story and make the right decision in the end!
  • How Web Hosting Affects SEO Results - By: Amy Armitage
    Tech pros spend a lot of time making the Web faster, easier and more efficient in ways most people don't even know about. In fact, even some fairly net-savvy folks don't know how web hosting affects SEO results. Factors of good hosting are another set of line items in your SEO, and there are some best practices to follow for optimal results.
  • The Best Sites To Find Reliable And Cheap Web Hosting Companies! - By: Andrey Fidrya
    It is not a surprise that key phrases like cheap web hosting services and cheap web hosting companies are very popular and frequently requested in such search engines as Google, Yahoo and MSN. Thus, when typing these words in search engine strings people can significantly economize on their orders. For this reason we have decided to provide readers with some important recommendations and help them in such a way to perform an effective search for affordable solutions.
  • Don't Think You Need A Web Host? Top 11 Reasons You Do - By: Amy Armitage
    There are so many reasons to have your own Web host, custom URL and well-crafted Web pages that it's hard to pick the "top 11." The following, in no particular order, should be compelling enough to get you moving in the right direction.
  • Domain Name Registration - By: Shermaine Camacho
    Creating a website is a big buzz nowadays. Many people are too hooked up on the Internet because almost everything a person need can also be found here, in just a click. Hence, it became a hub for business.
  • The Google Plan for Interplanetary Domination - By: Amy Armitage
    Google, a company that some conspiracy theorists honestly believe has a plan for ultimate world domination, has a history of pulling April Fool's pranks that later end up as real products or policies.
  • Why 24-Hour Web Hosting Support Is Critical To Your Business - By: Amy Armitage
    A lot of Web hosting companies are offering unlimited disk space at cheap rates. Now, who wouldn't want that?
  • Some recommendations on how to benefit from a popular hosting coupons website! - By: Andrey Fidrya
    As it is known a lot of people even do not know about all important advantages a good hosting coupons website can provide its visitors before they begin to order domain registration or hosting services. In fact, a popular hosting coupons website filled with interesting hosting articles, the latest news in hosting business, host descriptions, registrar and host discount coupons, honest and independent reviews can be really helpful for webmasters and business owners. For this reason why we would recommend you to continue reading the article and find out more about host selections and using the latest host and registrar coupons codes!
  • 10 Questions To Get Answered Before Choosing A Web Host - By: Amy Armitage
    It is particularly important for individuals and SMBs (Small and Medium-sized Businesses) that build their own websites, or spend very precious capital to do so, to find a good web hosting plan.