This is a free guide for choosing the right web hosting service.

Have you got a domain name and do not yet use it for a website or email accounts?

Do you find it confusing the whole concept of a web hosting service and all the terminology that is associated with it, for example: gibabytes, email forwarding, ftp accounts, bandwidth, data transfer and all of the other terms.

We at Pickaweb are here to help you. Do not think you are on your own. We are here to assist you no matter what your expertise is. We can simplify things that may appear complex to you.

The thing to bear in mind is that these days building & maintaining a professional looking website that works for you or your business is no longer an expensive or complex undertaking. We offer tools that are as intuitive, easy to use and will have an interface that will be familiar to you - if you can use a product such as Microsoft Word then you will be able to build your own professional looking website in just minutes. What´s more there is no need to download any software, configure anything on your PC or read through volumes of complex manuals. It is all done through the web.

Before choosing your web hosting it is worth considering a few points which may not immediately be obvious to you. The key things to take into account when choosing a hosting service are your Audience, any special requirements, reliability & uptime, customer support & pricing. Let´s just take a few minutes to consider these points in greater detail:

1. Your Audience. You need to think of the audience you wish to target for your website. If you wish to target a UK audience you will need a UK hosting service. That way you will achive a better position on regional search engines such as Google UK, MSN UK and so on. This will be especially useful if you believe that your potential clients are searching on UK businesses.

2. Special Requirements. If you wish to add extra functionality to your site you may want to consider features such as a forum or a blog. These are fantastic ways for helping you to build a community with your customers, colleagues or friends. If you do require these types of tools you need to make sure that there are features active on your hosting service for it to work such us PHP, CGI-Bin, MySQL databases. It used to be the case that installing these types of tools on your website could be a bit of a nightmare, taking hours of your time and usually required someone technical to install it.

Thankfully, that is no longer the case at all. With Pickaweb you can install forums, blogs and many other scripts in just minutes. You can automatically install & configure these powerful tools with just one click through your online control panel. There are no headaches and you are up and running in no time.

3. Reliability and Uptime Guarantee. You need to make sure that your website is always available. Having a website that is constantly inaccessible is of no use to you or your business. You could lose sales and just as importantly you could lose credibility. It is important to check that you have a guarantee of the amount of Uptime. Pickaweb offers you a 99.9 % uptime guarantee & we are here 24 hours a day monitoring our servers to make sure that all websites are ok and up and running.

4. Customer Support. It goes without saying that you need to consider the level of support that you will receive from your choice of hosting company. Most people only think about this when a problem arises but how a company provides support is one of the key things that you need to bear in mind. Providing round the clock support is an absolute must in today´s world. You can not afford to be waiting for hours for your issue to be looked into. When you have an issue with your website or a question that you need assistance with you want to be able to contact support and get action quickly.

This is exactly the reason that Pickaweb offers 24x7 techical support 7 days a week. What´s more is that we have a range of ways that you can contact us. We are available via phone, chat and email. You choose the form of contact that suits you best & we are here waiting to support you.

5. Free hosting or paid hosting? There are free hosting services available. But as the saying goes "there´s no such thing as a free lunch". Free hosting definitely falls into this category & the payback is that in return for providing your website with free hosting, in return your website effectively becomes a billboard for other companies´ advertising. Your site will contain lots of advert banners that pop up when your visitors view your pages. You need to consider whether this type of service is appropriate for your website as it may put visitors off. You will usually find that you do not get basic features such as domain based email accounts, MySQL databases, PHP etc.

On the flip side a paid for hosting will offer you an advert/banner free environment for your website. Once you have decided on this route then you need to consider the previous points raised such as your audience, uptime guarantees, customer service, etc. so it is always wise to check the level of service included. There are lots of very cheap hosting services out there but remember to check what level of service and support they offer. Try ringing them up out of hours for example to see how they respond. If they don´t pick up the phone or answer a chat you need to consider whether that company can really offer you the level of support that you need for your website.

Pickaweb offers professional hosting services & we have been offering these services since 2000 so in many ways we are amongst the industry´s pioneers. We are constantly working to improve our services and support content for our customers. We now also offer talking tutorials that guide you through most of the features that we offer with our web hosting services - you can find them just by going to our website and clicking on the 24x7 Support link on the navigation bar.

You can also use the live help button to chat to us at anytime should you have any questions about our service. We hope you found this guide useful. Should you need more information about our web hosting services please phone our Sales Department on 0871 218 0841