Website Design -- The Daunting Task of Choosing an ISP

One of the most often asked questions that I receive from clients, others in the throes of having and/or designing a website and even other designers/developers is, “How do I choose an ISP (Internet Server Provider)?” Your ISP is important because this is the company that hosts your website -- in other words, provides the location on the Internet where your website lives and resides. If you do a search for “website hosting” you will find 4,600,000 links, and there are close to that many possible hosts.

Consider your purpose and needs.

• If it is a personal site for friends and family, then the uptime, size and complexity of features are not as important. You can even use the free personal site that comes with your Internet connection. Some of these include advertisements (like Yahoo), but for a small fee, you can usually have the ads removed.
• If, however, your website portrays your business, you want to make sure that the host chosen is up and running at least 99.9% of the time. When visitors to your site get the “this page cannot be displayed” message, they seldom return and form the opinion that you and/or your company are not professional.
• If you have a large, complex website or plan to have your website grow into one, then you will want to choose a plan with the features that are important to you -- or that can be easily upgraded in the future.

Decide what features are most important to you and your website.

• Start by checking how much size is available. Depending upon how many graphics, scripting and content your pages consist of, most plans will provide sufficient space. For example, 250 MB should hold an average of 1,200 pages.
• Will you need e-mail addresses (which I suggest, because every time you send an e-mail, your domain name appears)? Some plans offer unlimited e-mail addresses while others average around 20 to 40.
• How about autoresponders? I love them because you can set up messages to be sent out when someone clicks a specific e-mail address. This is the way I handle my e-newsletter subscriptions. In these days of spam, if someone uses one of those e-mails who isn’t legitimate, they bounce back and I don’t add them to my distribution list. They are also handy for leaving an “out of the office” reply.
• What about other features like databases, FrontPage extensions, forums, search engines, shopping carts, etc.? The list can be endless, but there are many features that you will never use -- or, as you grow, will you?

Choosing a host may be one of the most difficult choices you will make. The good news is that there are many good ones out there to replace the one that doesn’t work out.