Webhost
A website with more features or data may require a hosting server with more memory, and band-width Selecting a hosting provider for larger websites requires more care.
You will need to consider a web host that has the capabilities to scale-up as your website becomes more successful. You need to consider not only the data, memory, and bandwidth fee structure and limitations of the hosting provider you select: also your own expertise for trouble shooting problems, the quality, response time and availability of support, and other factors. What that means is that as your website becomes more popular, the chances are more than likely going to require you to upgrade to a higher bandwidth package and if not perhaps to even larger server or private server.
If you plan on growing a very large website, you will want to consider different price points and the ability to upgrade your hosting to a larger package, and/or a dedicated server, or what is called a ‘virtual server’ or cloud hosting account, where a group of machines are shared by a group of users by way of software and hardware sharing configurations.
Support
Most large hosting companies use what is called a “ticket” system for providing support, that usually contains information about the issue at hand, it will then enclose a reference number which may be referred to as a “case” or “issue”. They’ll usually have a large database or knowledge centre for you to go through first to find solutions to common problems and then if you still need help you’ll fill out a form or do an online chat and your support request is put into a queue. It can take as long as 24 hours to get a response and that response could ask you for more questions to help narrow down the problem. Hosting companies do this to keep the cost down, because hourly support technicians are expensive. This is why even great hosting is inexpensive.
This basic level of support is usually limited to problems or configuration help on the server. What that means is that it does not include help setting things up or going over server administration that you may want done or looked at. However, by filling out support tickets in a very specific way, you can usually get extra support or help for optimizing your load and even solve problems you may have caused. It is better and more useful to have server administration work done by qualified professionals, where there is a great deal of importance placed on having a website.
For an additional fee, or sometimes from some hosting companies that specialize in premium support, you can have the option of actually calling a technician or having a server admin assist you with any request. At the high level it is called a managed server and your not limited to problems, you may be able to have them install software on your server for you or help you optimize your page load times, etc. You’ll pay more for premium support or for a managed server, but you may save even more by not needing outside technical support: server administration is a speciality.
For a small website it is probably not needed, but as you increase website complexity and features it becomes more important to have options when or if there is a problem. If you do not have a someone in your organization who can do some of the server administration tasks, it may be slow and difficult to get useful help from the ticket system.
