Introduction
It's so easy to start a website hosting company these day, heck even a 12 year old can do it! This is why it is hard to actually find a good company which offers a good service and keeps to its promises. This is why I have decided to spend some time and write about how to choose a good web host.
Table of Contents
1.Where to find a web host?
The first step is actually finding a web hosting company. You can do this by doing a quick search in your favourite search engine, using terms like "hosting". I also recommend that you ask family and friends on their recommendations and it may also be worth checking out Web Hosting Talk as loads of member their have wrote about their experiences with different web hosts.
2. Disk Space
The amount of disk space you need depends on what you are going to store on your hosting account. If your site is just going to consist of text and a few small images then you don't really need a big amount of disk space but if you are thinking of having loads of images or things such as videos and music then you will need a lot of disk space. Most hosts today are offering around 200GB for a cheap price but this is what is known as overselling and basically the host knows no one will use this much space so they sell more space then their server actually has.
3. Bandwidth
Bandwidth means how much data your site will need to transfer each month.. So, each time someone visits your website they have to download the pages content and that takes away some of your bandwidth so if you plan for your site to be very popular then you need a lot of bandwidth but if it is a small personal site then a lot of bandwidth will go unused. Loads of web hosts are also overselling bandwidth and are giving out 500GB for pennies. You will probably never use this ridiculous amount and most hosts won't even allow you to use this much as they will have restrictions in their T.O.S and A.U.P so make sure you read it.
4. Scripting Languages Supported
You now need to focus on what scripting languages your host offers, the two most popular are PHP and ASP/ASP.NET, if your host is run on Linux servers then you will most likely have PHP installed. Most hosts also have support for Ruby and Python so it's worth checking it out otherwise you won't be able to run database driven sites.
5. Extra Features
MySQL databases, email accounts, FTP accounts and domains are all considered extra features. You need to check to see how many databases, email accounts and ftp accounts your host offers. You will probably only need around 5 of each but it all depends on what your site is going to be. Another thing you need to check is how many parked, add-on and sub domains you are allowed as many hosts are putting restrictions on these.
6. Uptime
Your host should have good uptime, uptime means how long your server has been up for. Your server will of course need to be up 24/7 and if your hosts server does go down they should offer you a refund or something similar, check your hosts T.O.S for an uptime guarantee as they are very important.
7. Support
One way to check if your host has good support is to see if they have a live support and if it is online and if they do then see how long it takes to get through to an operator, also try sending them a support ticket and see how long they take to reply.
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