It has been 8 months since we first starting hosting out of Chicago, IL, and the number of clients has grown faster than we originally hoped for. Hosting is a tough business, but we have managed to find a niche through great support and reliable service. We hope that our popularity continues to grow in the hosting community.

One great benefit we began providing to our clients nearly two weeks ago is Softaculous, a great cPanel addon that allows for both quick and painless installation of hundreds of scripts in a matter of seconds. The installation process is 99% automated, only requiring you enter what you want your user name and password to be. The system installer takes care of the rest. Pretty sweet if you ask me.

We hope to offer other exciting features to all hosting plans in the days, months and years to come.

Your business is 100% reliant on the internet, from your website, email and more. Everything you do in association with your business is tied to one entity – your web host, and without a reliable web host, where are you left standing? Out on the street corner like you’ve just been evicted from your apartment, stranded and alone?

There are thousands of website hosts to choose from in such a demanding industry that finding a reliable host can be quite  a challenge. Because of this, you need to be very careful in choosing who you are going to rely on to be responsible for your personal or professional website. Such things to look for is how long a company has been in business. To do so, one of the first things you can look at is how long their domain name has been registered for. Another thing to look at is their business website. Is it presentable, professional, and full of knowledgeable information? How good is their technical support? How about the reliability of the host’s server(s)? Do they have a lot of downtime?

One way to get the answer to these and other questions is to search the internet. Google and other search engines are some of the best ways to do research on in today’s fast-paced computing world. Search for the company’s name and see what hits you come across. Read the information you find. Also, search twitter, facebook, and other social networks. A reliable internet company should have some kind of social networking. While checking such resources, do you notice if this company is active in these networks? Learn as much as you can about this and other companies, and at the end of the day, you will either feel comfortable with this company or not.

One last step you can take before signing up with a hosting company is to contact them directly (usually best through email as most do not have phone numbers), and ask them any remaining questions you may have. When writing them to have any final questions answered, pay attention to how long it takes for them to reply to your concerns. How is their tone in the response? Do they seem friendly and eager to help you with your hosting and business concerns?

Reliability is crucial when it comes to having your business on the internet. Do all the research you can, and ask every question you can think of. Having a reliable host goes a long way in assuring your businesses success.