Web Hosting - What featues are most important to you?

If you were to describe the perfect web hosting service for your business or personal use, what featues should they have? Which ones are the most important? Is the most important feature the site building template? The ability to post pictures/photos? ecommerce?

Web Hosting - What featues are most important to you?

price versus features offered...... AND

Support! When the web is down I want to contact a LIVE person to get it up and running. None of the %26quot;email and wait days for a response%26quot;.

Examples: I have had client web sites hacked.

One had a new hacked opening page with anti-US slogans and pictures.

The other web site had been hacked with an opening page for the %26quot;man/boy love society%26quot;.

Needless to say my clients wanted the webs corrected immediately, and the hacked sites were password protected with new passwords!

Having a telephone number and/or immediate email response is a MUST HAVE. If the company has no listed phone number for support - move on to someone else.

I once tested a web hosting service (POWWEB) by inquiring via email and telephone at 4 AM on a Sunday morning. ;-) They responded quickly, and as a result gained about fifteen new client accounts. I was doing webs professionally at the time. (I%26#039;ve retired, so I don%26#039;t know if their current response efforts are as good as they used to be---but when I used them they were terrific).

Site building templates are a nice %26quot;crutch%26quot; when you are first starting out... but most of them will not meet every demand you may have in the future.

Grab a copy of Microsoft FrontPage, along with an instructional book from your local book store. It is a What You See Is What You Get program, and has a low demand learning curve. There WILL BE times when you will have to start looking at the HTML code on a web site to figure out what the *(%26amp;(*%26amp;%26amp;*) is going wrong. Using FrontPage and reviewing your work graphically and in HTML acts as a good learning tool.

Ecommerce? Do you really need the ability to showcase a hundred or more items? Do you currently have a merchants account to accept credit cards? (they are tough to obtain from local banks and cost $$ otherwise).

You can list items with photographs and have a %26quot;Click here to pay with PayPal%26quot; button that will allow a customer to use a credit card for payment. PayPal will take their cut, but it does solve the problem.

Web Hosting - What featues are most important to you?

-99.9% server up time

-php, ASP etc. etc. support

-database

Other Replys:Web traffic %26amp; web space.