If you have a small business website and want to share it with the world, it needs to be hosted on the web server or simply a server. A server is just another name of a computer which is connected to the World Wide Web so that your website is accessed by every one else. With plethora of Web Hosting Providers, and each claiming to be the best, it becomes difficult to choose the right partner. But having said this, there is a checklist that needs to be followed to mitigate your worries. The type of Hosting Provider would depend on the nature, size and scale of your business. Consideration of these factors would let you decide on the technical competency that your business requires. The general rule of thumb in selecting the Hosting Partner drops down to the following: 1) Excellent Customer Support 2) Affordability 3) Company Stability

n

n

n

4) Robust Datacenter I would only be touching upon customer support in this article. Excellent customer support, ceteris paribus, is the number one criteria in selecting the Web Hosting Partner. The first voluntary step in getting acquainted with any hosting company would be visiting their website and skimming through their testimonials. Relying on the authenticity of testimonials is a commonly followed phenomena and an outdated one too. But honestly is it really difficult to fake the testimonials? Instead it is advisable to take into consideration other factors.

n

One important factor to consider is the company’s employee to customer ratio (C/E ratio). C/E ratio is the number of employees handling the total customers. This is a decisive factor since it indicates whether there are enough employees to handle the customer base effectively and efficiently.

n

Let us understand this with the help of two instances. In the first instance, a particular hosting company has approximately 10,000 customers and employs 20 employees/ support staff. This means its C/E ratio is 500 (10,000/20). In the second instance, another hosting provider has a team of 40 support staff to cater to 80,000 customers. The C/E ratio comes out to be 2000 (80,000/40). If we compare both the scenario, then customer satisfaction and response time would be much more satisfactory in the case that has lesser C/E ratio. Ideally, one should look for a professional Hosting Provider with low customer to employee ratio.

n