Most people decide on hosting for a key reasons, features (or simply speaking to a supplier that doesn’t use too much jargon and can describe what you are asking for) reliability (speed and stability) and, importantly, price.
But, as Harry Hill would say “Which is best? There’s only one way to find out”
So it’s time for a fight:
A three way scrap between the key contenders, the ultimate prize fight to see which element is the king of hosting decisions – Features vs Reliability vs Price.
Right?
But wait, why do some companies, literally, home in on location first? That isn’t in the mix from the first pass at what is important.
Why is it that the first element for the most successful companies focussed on where their market actually is and not on the big 3 of features, reliability or price?
The reason is purely down to a need to maximise their audience and get greater sales from more visitors. It’s all about search engines and success. Search engines fanatically try to narrow down results to give the most relevant responses and are increasingly moving towards local identifiers. Choices will be made by search software over “where is this site?” and “what location does the person doing the search most want to have returned” This often means that, whilst spelling mistakes are expected and catered for, different use of language (color anyone?) and expressions mean that the anticipatory devices in modern search technology are looking for different things.
There are also a number of factors that are less obvious, such as timezones: Automatic and planned manual maintenance routines on servers are scheduled for the period of lowest server activity, a server in America, for example, will have very different usage patterns than one in the UK which could cause inconvenience just when you don’t need it.
Service response is also, often, a critical consideration. It is unlikely that offshore companies will have the same support people working the hours that you do.
Now, I am not saying that the elements of features, reliability and price are not equally important, clearly they are, but they should be part of a wider decision. If you want the best search engine returns and are running a business in the UK targeted at UK consumers, then start with hosting in the UK.