Before you choose a website hosting company for a real estate website, you want to make sure that you know what you’re looking for first. How much space do you need, are you going to running website scripts or plug-ins, and what platform are you going to be running your website on, WordPress, Joomla!, Magento, or just plain HTML. Don’t worry if you don’t know the answers to these questions yet, I hope you will know them by the end of this quick post.
Before you get started, I just want you to know that I have already been through several different hosting companies with my websites and uncovered quite a few things that I had no clue about before you started.
Do you need a dedicated server or just a shared server?
If you’re just running your first website and only going to be having one website on the server, you can definitely get by with just a shared server. Dedicated server will run anywhere from hundred $50 a month to $250 month, while a shared server can be as cheap as $4.95 per month while giving you pretty much everything you going to need to get running. Keep in mind that you can always upgrade later if you decide that you need more functionality or more space.
Do they have cPanel
CPanel is what is used to access the files and back end of your website server. It’s important have see panel access because this is what is most common and what most people use to manage their backend of their real estate website. There are other systems available, but most tutorials and plug-ins deal with CPanel.
What type of platform will you be running free one real estate website
I would highly recommend that you use WordPress for your real estate website because it is so dynamic and very functional. It has millions of users and thousands upon thousands of different themes and plug-ins already developed by users that you can get for free or purchase on top of your site. I have used Joomla, and Magento, and plain HTML, and none of these even come close to what you can do with WordPress.
Also, I am not talking about WordPress.com, I am talking about WordPress.org which allows you to download the WordPress files right to your own server which gives you the flexibility to do what ever you want with your business and install any scripts or plug-ins you like to use. Most likely, you will want to use an IDX plug-in for your MLS listings.
Do you get e-mail through your server
This something that you want to consider, but if your server does not allow e-mail, which every cPanel does, you can still get an e-mail account through your company that is hosting your domain name. Go Daddy for example provides free and premium e-mail accounts. That way you can have an e-mail like yourname@yourdomain.com.
After going through several different servers and website hosting companies, I ended up going with HostGator. I started with Go Daddy website servers and found that there was a lot of things that I could not do with GoDaddy. After making the switch years ago, I have stuck with host gator and had no issues with performance, flexibility, or functionality.
Another website company in addition to host gator that I’ve heard is good and I’ve had some experience with his blue host if you want to check them out. Good luck on your real estate website hosting company search.
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