How to Go About Testing a Web
Hosting Company
Once you have shor listed some hosting
companies, you would like to have some kind of test that
you can ascertain quality of their services. Here are
some of simpler and quick tests which can assist you to
determine the effectiveness of a web hosting company.
These can be used in addition to tip we have listed at
"how to find a hosting
company":-
Response Test
Send an email to any of the email addresses to see the response
time. It may be useful to send a sales inquiry to billing
email address to find how quickly they refer cases within
themselves. Normally a response within 4 hours shall be
good. Do not count auto responders in that.
Uptime Test
. All hosting companies must maintain a monitoring service
to see that their servers are up all the time and should
be able to provide an independent report on server uptime.
Ask for server uptime report of an independent source from
hosting company you want to select.
Speed Test.
This may enable you to have idea and at times compare of
the servers speed for gross variations. Click
here to Test Speed of the server.
Location Test. Due to availability of better
infrastructure, its normally assumed that the servers at
data centers in USA, UK, Australia and Europe should give
better performance. You can check the location of your web
host by simply visiting contact us page where they should
have mentioned their location. An attempt to hide location
ie not having their location address mentioned at contact
us page may mean that you are up to a part timer. Server
location of your hosting company can also be checked using
domain name as well as ip address of your web hosting company
using independant sites like www.2privacy.com/www/privacy-protection/ip-check-privacy-test.html
, http://www.whois.sc/ and http://www.dnsstuff.com/
Domain Registration Offered. Once can register
domain with a different registrar and host with another
company yet if your web hosting company also offers domain
reigsration its even better. Another aspect to check in
this regard is that whether your domain registration / host
offers domain management panel. An absence of the same may
deprive you of transferring to another hosting company if
you find present host not good enough.
Other Tests. Some of the other areas where
you can test a web hosting company before you host your
web site with them are:-
-
Authenticity through presence
of awards, reviews at various authentic places.
-
Multiplicity and depth
of offerings / features.
-
Balance in cost ie not
too cheap, not too expensive.
-
Professionalism in
their own web site.
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