Comparing ISPs

If you're in the market for the services of a national ISP, you've got many to choose from. They all offer different ISP services, sport different ISP technologies, have different records regarding both ISP security and ISP reliability, and of course charge different amounts of money. Sites like the ISP Buying Guide can help with these comparisons. You find an ISP directory with feature list comparisons, cost comparisons, and more. You will also be able to drill down and do some comparisons based upon state, so you can even see some of the local ISPs alongside the national ISPs.

Finding Local ISPs

Let's say you're in the typical scenario of having moved to a new place and are now looking for an ISP. Let's further say that you've had bad experiences with national ISPs and are looking for a local one. This can be a little tricky as doing a Web search for keywords like "ISP" or "Internet Service Provider" will pull up all sorts of irrelevant sites and a handful of national ISPs, but probably nothing useful. There are three things that can help: the first is to include your state or province name along with your other search terms, something like "Massachusetts ISP" for example. The second is to utilize something like DMOZ that includes listings by region. The third is to find the local Web site for your new town and the local Web site for the closest large city and see what ISP lists they have; they quite possibly keep an ISP directory, and maybe even have some customer feedback.

ISP Search Facilities

Some ISP Web hosting companies provide a special type of ISP search service that enables your Web site to be searched. If you configure your Web site appropriately, visitors will be able to search it for particular words or phrases. While this is not too useful for the typical home site, it's a huge advantage for large business sites. Businesses looking for Web hosting providers should always check in advance whether or not the provider has some sort of searching ISP technology. Most ISPs with dynamic Web hosting capabilities will have searching technology; most ISPs with only static Web hosting capabilities will not.