5) Security and Support are Critical to Uptime and Website Availability

Many hosting providers advertise that they provide support and security, but shop carefully to be sure you're getting these critical functions. If they don't openly advertise 24-7 support, or offer a toll-free number for questions and support then be wary of doing business with them. Any reputable web hosting provider will provide regular back-ups of your site (or give you sufficient administrative access to do this yourself), have back-up or contingency plans for power outages so your server (and website) stay up, and provide 24-7 server monitoring to be sure that their customers' websites are always up and running.

Also, very important is the server environment and platform that your website is hosted on.  Your web hosting provider should provide regular updates to the server software, as well as any scripting and languages, and encryption utilities that may be necessary for your website to function. Hackers work around the clock, around the world, to find new ways to break into servers and server software is a critical point of vulnerability.  Keeping the server software current is one of the most important ways to keep criminals from compromising your online business.

Money-saving tip: look for web hosting providers that charge no set-up fees, offer free domain name registration, and/or give you a discount rate if you pay for a full year (or more) in advance.

Many web hosting providers will offer package deals that include a certain amount of bandwidth, server space, e-mail addresses as well as a number of these developer tools. You can even choose a web hosting provider that offers dedicated hosting (yours is the only website on the entire server) and co-location (you have complete, administrative access to a dedicated server that you run remotely). Of course, the prices for these more dedicated and sophisticated services are significant, but they are options to consider if your web hosting needs should outgrow the typical 'shared hosting' plans that are so prevalent and affordable.

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