The web hosting provider is your business window to the world. If you do not have the appropriate hosting environment for your website, then you will quickly find your customer base dwindling. There is literally nothing worse for a potential customer than to give a site a chance only to be hit with a 404 screen. That person will likely never return to you no matter how good your remarketing strategy may be.

Here are some of the 5 major factors that you should understand when you are looking for a web hosting provider.

1. You Should Look For A Web Hosting Provider That Is Not In The Mainline Of Traffic

There are very few web hosting providers who are outside of the mainline of hosting traffic that have to put up with the slower speeds and higher data leakage as the mainline traffic servers. Just as on a regular street highway, web servers that are located in a physically high traffic area will be very popular because of their exposure; however, the back streets and alleys are usually the best way to go.

Staying away from a web host in the Americas or in the busier, more commercial parts of Europe is usually a great move for a business, especially a smaller one. Web hosts that are physically outside of this center line will give you a much faster service along with having less of a problem of data leakage.

Mainline traffic web hosts may be less expensive; however, they will most likely cost your business a great deal over the long run. For the most part, you should definitely move towards a Drupal web hosting provider rather than a mainline hosting provider.

2. You Must Be Sure That You Have A Guaranteed Uptime For Your Hosting Service

It is part for the course for a web hosting service to say that it is willing to give a guarantee of uptime. Uptime must be around 99 to 100 percent in order to be viable in the market of today. A web host should have mirrors and other fail-safe measures in places in order to make sure that this guarantee is possible.

Uptime is the part of the web hosting platform that will ensure that your customers do not have a bad experience when they finally decide to move to your website from an ad or an organic search engine listing. As stated before, if you are not able to guarantee your uptime for your customers, then you will lose so many customers that you will not able to get back under any circumstances.

3. What Other Companies Does This Web Hosting Provider Have On Board?

It can be difficult to determine if your chosen web hosting company can actually handle your business. One of the only ways to tell is to look at the different types of businesses that are already using the web hosting service. The companies do not have to be in your industry; however, they should be of a similar size to your company. This is one of the only ways that you are able to determine the future of your web hosting service as well as your present.

4. What Is The Data Transfer Speed That You Can Expect?

What kind of highway is your data going to be traveling on? With Google finding ways to implement a fiber optic line of traffic in select cities around the world, the Internet will soon be an incredibly fast tool. Although you do not necessarily have to keep up with Google fiber technology today, you must have the ability to look down the road a few years as your company grows and is in need of more resources. It is always good to find a web hosting company that you can stick with as you scale so that you do not have to switch companies and risk hiccups in your customer facing experience.

Depending on the physical location of your web hosting service, you may or may not be able to expect the fastest speeds around the world. However, you must be able to compete with the rates that your competitors are receiving from their web hosts. You may be able to get this number specifically if you have a bit of in house technical experience. However, you do not have to have this necessarily. You can very easily perform a back of the napkin test that will show you approximately how fast your competition is simply by tracking the speed of the website as you move onto it as a consumer.

5. What Is The Price Of Your Web Host?

This should be the last thing that you look at for a reason. The feature set that you are receiving in the service of your customers is much more important than the price. A good web host combined with a good business will pay for itself many times over if you have the ability to scale as well as the ability to integrate your business into the current business landscape without too much trouble.

However, there is no reason that you have to pay an arm and a leg just to get a decent web Drupal hosting provider. You may also be on a tight budget if you are a small business or a startup venture. You do not have to necessarily get the top program for any web hosting provider. Most of the reputable services will have tiers of service that can scale with you as your business grows.

Although there are many other aspects of posting that you should look at, the above points will definitely get you started with the right web Drupal hosting provider if you follow all of the advice given above. Make sure that you keep in mind your scaling efforts in the future as well as your customer service efforts in the present. There will always be new technologies to take hold of, so keep your ear to the street and take advantage of everything that you see.