How to Choose Your Web Hosting Company

Choosing the right web host is one of the most important things for your site. Web hosting allows your web page to be viewed on the Internet. The web hosting companies provide the equipment and other technical resources needed for individuals or a companies to place their web site.

You need to choose one that provides what you need, but not more than what you need. You don't want to get stuck out in the cold with a website that doesn't function as you want it to, and you don't want to be paying for facilities that you don't use. The key to this is to know your needs and requirements, and then find one web host from the crowd out there.

To make the right decision you need to:

1. Decide what you need.		2. Find a web hosting company that meets your needs.		3. Make sure that the company provides an upgrade option as your business expands.

1. What are your requirements need for your website?

To help choose one that'll get the job done, you should ask yourself the following key questions and get a rough estimate.

• What type of website do you have?
  - personal / hobby site
  - business site
  - ecommerce site
• How much money are you willing to spend? (setup fees, monthly/quarterly/yearly charges)
  - Nothing
  - Less than $20/month
  - Less than $100/month
  - More than $100/month
• How much data storage space do you need?
• How much data transfer allowance do you need?
• Do you require e-mail accounts? How many?
• Do you need access to a server-side scripting and database solution? (ASP, PHP, Cold Fusion, Perl, CGI, MySQL, Microsoft Access, FrontPage)

2. Finding Your Web Hosting Company

Your Budget

• Free Hosting Companies
• Budget Hosting Companies
• Business Site Hosting Companies

Your Platform

• Linux Hosting Companies
• Windows Hosting Companies

Your Security and Requirements

• Shared Hosting Companies
• Dedicated Hosting Companies

The Cost

The hosting price will become one of your biggest concerns for you. Your web hosting company should offer you a reasonable price for services and flexibility in payment methods and schedules.

These days, the web hosting plan starts with about $5 per month for entry-level sites. If you have a decently large web sites, you should be able to spend at least $20 per month. However, the higher price doesn't always mean the good service.

Look for hidden costs when comparing prices. You will find that some web hosts charge a setup fee. Don't rule out a web hosting company just because of this expense. Some of the best companies charge a setup fee to help in covering the cost of having high quality technical support available.

Most hosts will usually charge you a one time fee to register your domain name (or transfer it from another host) and then charge a monthly fee for their server space.

Tech Support

When it comes to choosing a web hosting provider, one of the most important factors to consider is the level of customer service provided. Most free and budget web hosts only offer support via e-mail. If you have a mission critical web site you might want to pay the money for a top-tier web host or perhaps even a dedicated server, but expect to pay more per month.

Before signing up, you may give the host a call, email them, instant message them. Whatever method is most convenient for you to use give them a buzz and test how fast their response time is and how friendly and knowledgeable their technicians are. If a host says they have 24 hour customer service, you should be able to call and talk to someone in the middle of the night.

Reliability

How reliable is a web hosting company? This is the most important factors when you run a web site. Most claim 99.9% uptime, but due to the nature of computers and communications equipment, outages will and do occur occasionally. Unfortunately, it is hard to know until you run your web site on their server.

One strategy is when you sign your hosting contract, choose a month-to-month plan for the first three to six months. In that way you may switch to a different company If you don't like the company's service and reliability.

Note that even if you are prepared to pay a huge price for your hosting needs, it does not guarantee that your host is any good. You'll probably wind up settling for a trade-off between price, reliability and features that you're willing to live with.