Choosing the Right Host for Your Site

When choosing a host for your website, there are both subjective and objective aspects to consider. Many of the objective aspects are covered in the hundreds of articles that have already been written, but less often will you find the subjective aspects; those that are driven more by feelings and perception or your specialized needs.

There are many characteristics that you should generally expect all web hosts to include:

1. High Availability: All the features in the world are worthless, if your site is not available when your visitors try to access it. This incorporates many different components. Do they use quality servers and hardware? Do they have multiple redundant connections to the Internet? Do they have a lifecycle management program in place to ensure that you are not being hosted on a server built in 1987? (Most data centers plan for servers to have a 3