How to Choose the Best Web Hosting

Web hosting is critical to the success of your online venture. The uptime, ease of use, and support your web hosting plan offers you greatly influence how smoothly your Internet operations will run.

There are many factors involved in choosing the best web hosting for you and your company. Which web hosting you choose will ultimately depend on how important each of these factors is to you. As you read about choosing the best web hosting, take mental note of what your needs are and what will work for you.

1. Understanding the Important Features of Web Hosting
2. Collecting Data to Base Your Decision On
3. Comparing Web Hosts and Making the Choice

Understanding the Important Features of Web Hosting

Price

Price is (obviously) how much you pay for the web hosting, and it is sometimes the most important factor. Some plans bill monthly, quarterly, or yearly. Some are free. Figure out the monthly price of each web hosting solution when you are comparing hosting companies.

Domain Registration

Web hosts often provide domain registration services - they will take care of setting up your www.widget.com or whatever it may be. Another thing to look for is free or discounted registrations - sometimes you will be able to register your domain name as part of the web hosting plan at no additional cost.

Make sure that your web hosting plan will support the number of domains that you need. Most small businesses require only one, but you'd be surprised at how quickly you decide you need another.

Disk Space

Web hosting provides you with a certain amount of disk space on which to store your files. To evaluate this factor, you simply need to estimate the total space required to store all your files. Cheap or introductory web hosting plans often include as little as 20 to 50 megabytes. The best rated web hosting plans provide a gigabyte or more in plans that cost $5 or more a month.

Bandwidth (Data Transfer)

Each web hosting plan has a certain amount of bandwidth (data transfer) that you are allowed to use per month. When files are transferred, they "use up" or "occupy" some of the connections on the Internet for a certain amount of time. Web hosting companies have a limited amount of transferring that their servers and connections can do each month. They divide it up and charge each of the sites that host with them for the right to transfer files.

Dedicated IP Address

Some web hosts will use one IP address to serve several hosted web sites—the server will take requests for a group of domain names, route them to one IP address, and sort out the traffic itself. This solution can have certain problems such as server overload or errors or being associated with any poor quality web sites that share the same IP address. Dedicated IP addresses are better for the uptime, reputation, and search engine optimization of your site.

Scripting Support

If you plan to run .php, .asp, CGI, or other scripts, you need to make sure that your web hosting plan includes them.

Database Support

Does your web hosting plan offer SQL, MySQL, or other databases? Do you need them?

Email Accounts

You need to ensure that you have enough email accounts and email storage space to give your organization adequate communication resources. How many employees do you have? How many different business functions (sales, support, administrative, engineering, marketing, etc.) need their own email address(es)?

FTP User Accounts

An important features of web hosting plans is FTP (File Transfer Protocol) access. FTP access allows you to upload and download files to and from your server. Having several accounts and easy access to FTP will make running your web site easier.

Customer Service

If you ever have problems with your hosting, you will end up talking to customer service. Problems or questions arise with every web site, and so good customer service is a must. In fact, a company with outstanding customer service and average hosting options is better than a company with outstanding hosting options and poor customer service.

Guarantees and Warranties

Compare the different guarantees (money-back, server up-time, etc.) and warrantees that each hosting company and plan offer. These guarantees can be important if things go wrong or you decide that your hosting isn't working or something like that.

Collecting Data to Base Your Decision On

Now that you understand the important features of web hosting plans, you need to collect data about several different hosting offers so that you can make an informed decision about which host to use.

The table below is a great way to collect data about different hosting options. Simply "plug in" the information you gather like in the example below.

Feature	Host 1	Host 2	Host 3
Price	Free	$15.00	$4.95
Domain Registration	None	1 Free	None
Disk Space	20 MB	50 GB	5 GB
Transfer	2 GB	750 GB	50 GB
Dedicated IP	No	Yes	Yes
Scripting	None	CGI, ASP, PHP	CGI, PHP
Database	None	100 MS-SQL	20 MySQL
Emails	1	Unlimited	100
FTP	1	Unlimited	100
Customer Service	None	Above Average	Excellent
Gurantee	None	30-day Money-back	90-day Money-back

Comparing Web Hosting Plans and Making the Choice

Once you've collected data about all of the web hosting plans that are available, you will need some way to make a choice between them. There are some ways you can narrow your search, such as the following:

Technical Inadequacy

No matter how cheap or well-recommended a web host is, if it can't support the feature/technical needs of your web site, it isn't an option. This is why most, if not all, free web hosting is out of the question for a real, professional site.

Personal Recommendation

The glowing recommendation, or the terrifying horror story, from a trusted friend can serve to guide your web hosting decision. Friends who have simliar sites to yours and previous research and experience with sites can be invaluable in finding a hidden gem or uncovering a real stinker. Ask your friends if they have any recommendations.

Best Value for a Given Price

Sometimes you have a fixed amount of money to work with every month. You can ignore everything over that price and try to find the hosting that offers the best features and options for that amount of money or less.

Best Price for a Given Feature Set

Some web site owners find themselves with a fairly rigid set of criteria for choosing the best web hosting. Find all the hosts that offer features that satisfy your needs and choose the one that offers the best combination of price and service.

Discounts

Web hosts will often offer discounts to new accounts in an attempt to earn new business. These discounts or affiliate programs can dramatically reduce the price of your hosting and make hosting available that you wouldn't otherwise be able to afford.

Remember how important your web hosting plan is—it's like your virtual office building. Choose your real estate wisely!

Best of Luck!
—Michael Ebert