SoftCom Corporate Blog

When looking for a good web host, there are a lot of important factors to consider. WebHosting Talk, a forum devoted to web hosting, recently published a survey indicating that reliability, security and support were considered the three most important factors – as identified by SME customers - when selecting a potential web host.

These are relatively easy things to investigate. Netcraft.com – an independent 3rd party that doesn’t provide hosting services – monitors the performance of hosting companies and makes their findings publicly available.

When investigating support, look for a 24/7 tool free telephone number on the website and make sure it’s included with the plan you want to subscribe to.

Security is a little more involved: What is their datacenter like? Have they had any major security breaches? How long have they been doing business? (this is important as companies who haven’t figured this out don’t tend to last very long).

But there are other factors that aren’t discussed as much. One of them is having something called a dedicated IP address which can have a major impact on site security.

An IP address, for those that don’t know, is the 12 digit number behind a domain name used to resolve a request. Domain names were invented because people can’t remember really long numbers so a name was essentially mapped to a number. For example if you type 168.144.1.9 into your browser you will go to http://www.softcom.biz. Either the domain name or the IP will work.

Because there is a limited number of IP addresses available, many hosting companies give their customers shared IP addresses (many domain names under one IP address) and then use programmatic methods to resolve any request for a domain name on a shared IP address. Visitors will be able to reach a website hosted on a shared IP address but there are some shortcomings.

The main shortcoming is SSL security. If you are running an eCommerce site or any type of content that requires encryption, you will want to have a dedicated IP address. Otherwise visitors will get a warning that the site name doesn’t match the name on the SSL key.

There are also SEO or search engine optimizations concerns to consider. Many people have found that sites with a dedicated IP address do mysteriously better in search engine results than those utilizing shared IPs. This isn’t proven, but why take a chance with something as important as being indexed in the major search engines.

myhosting.com was fortunate enough to get a large block of IP addresses when it was founded 10 years ago and provides a dedicated IP address with all its Windows sites. As for support and reliability – you won’t find anyone better.

John Carthy
V.P. Sales and Marketing
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.