If you have an online business, you need the best web hosting service available. A low quality service could cost you a lot of traffic. Read this article to find out if you should switch to a different service or not.

Keep track of how often your site goes offline and when this occurs. It is normal for web hosts to perform maintenance on their servers on a regular basis, but this downtime should be scheduled at night or when your site does not get a lot of traffic and you should be notified in advance so you can make arrangements. Your server should be down once a month for a few hours, occasionally for an entire day. If your site is unavailable over long periods of time and if you are not notified before this downtime occurs, you need to get in touch with your web host. Ask for an explanation and cancel your plan if your web hosting service does not have a good excuse for this downtime or does not plan on fixing the issue.

Does your web hosting provider offer the kind of guarantees your business needs? A good web hosting service should guarantee you that your data will be stored safely. Read your contract carefully and pay attention to the small print. If your web host does not offer any kind of guarantee for your content, you should think about switching to a service that can provide you a good back-up solution. If you cannot afford this feature, make sure you keep an updated version of your site on your personal computer or on an online storage service.

Does your web hosting service allocate enough bandwidth to your site? If your site starts getting more traffic, you need to make sure your server can handle it. Avoid purchasing a plan with limited bandwidth, unless you are sure it will cover your needs. You should also read conditions carefully and make sure the bandwidth is allocated evenly throughout the day and not only when your site is not getting any visits. If you find you have subscribed to a plan with restrictions on your bandwidth, you need to change it right away. You could lose a lot of potential customers if your site loads too slowly or if they get an error message.

Keep track of how much you are billed for every month. You need to keep comparing your plan and its cost to other options available on the market: your plan might be the best one available when you subscribe to it, but a similar plan might be available at a better price a few months later. You also need to make sure you are not being charged more than you should: some web hosting services will charge you for features you are not using or for the extra bandwidth you are using. If your web hosts raises your bill without notifying you, you should look for another option right away.

Pay attention to these four things and do some research about other web hosting solutions regularly. If you are going to switch to another service, plan ahead of time.