With So Many Hosting Companies on the Web,
Which is the Best One to Use ?
We get asked about which hosting company to use a lot from our users. At last check, there were over 37,000 companies offering webhosting services on the internet - and about 36,995 that you should stay as far away as you can from.
The problem with website hosting is that just about anyone can start a webhosting business - and with a fancy website, and a few promises, you can build up a tidy and profitable base of users.
The real problem occurs when your site goes down and you need to get hold of someone fast - only to find out that their 24 hour customer support line is more like a two day support line. Customers can be lost, your search engine rank dropped and credibility ruined, all because of a poor choice for a web host. It doesn't matter if your website is new or you have an established online presence, choosing the right host is one of the most important decisions you can make towards your future success.
Finding a good host can be a difficult process. Most hosting companies offer some sort of an revenue sharing program where the referring site gets a commission when they send a customer to them. This profit model pretty well assures that the top paying - and not necessarily the best companies get the best reviews on all of the different webhosting review sites out there.
By far the best webhosting company on the internet is 1&1 hosting. You likely have seen their advertising in just about every business and technical magazine, and is where we host all of our websites, including this one with. Prior to using 1&1, we used several different companies including Host Gator, Dot Easy and several other companies in an effort to find the best webhosting solution for out needs. Needless to say, we could fill a much bigger space than available here with horror stories about many companies offer hosting services. From pirated domains, to non existent customer service to ugly billing irregularities, it is definitely buyer beware when it comes to webhosting.
With that said, here are the most critical questions you need to ask of any company you are thinking about hosting your website with.
1) Payment Terms
Many hosting companies offer discount hosting packages with one significant catch - you need to prepay for the term of the contract. They draw consumers in with a $6 a month hosting plan, but it is only available on a 24 month prepaid contract, which means you are putting $144 up front to get your site online. I don't need to tell you that you should never pay long term up front fees for anything on the internet. It is too easy for them to close up shop and disappear with your money once they have it, not to mention that companies that that bill monthly always have better customer service because they know you can cancel at any timer rather than be obligated to stick around despite bad service on a prepaid agreement.
2) Traffic Allowance
This is also called bandwidth, and is an important consideration if your site gets popular. With this said though, it is easy to get caught up in the bandwidth marketing ploy and end up paying for far more data transfer then you will ever need.
For even a busy site that is a going concern, unless you are streaming video files, you don't need more than 2000 Gigabytes of traffic - any more is serious over kill. By the way, if you do need more than this, then you should be looking at a dedicated server.
3) Domain Usage
Most hosting companies only allow you to host 1 or 2 domains per hosting package - where 1&1 offer unlimited domain hosting on the same package. In other words, with a standard hosting package of $10 a month, you can host 20 or 30 websites, rather than having to add a new package for each website you launch. Even many experienced website owners make this mistake of opening a new account for each domain rather than just using a company that will let you put all your domains on one plan.
4) A Customer First Policy
It has become popular among competing websites to file spam complaints against their competition in order to get their site closed down from an over zealous hosting company. You want to trust your site to a host that will always hear your side of the story before shutting you down. Some companies will even seize your domain name in the case of a spam complaint which could paralyze your operation for weeks until the dispute could be resolved. You also want a company that will contact you before shutting down your site in the case of you using to much bandwidth or having a dispute of copyright issues.
5) Cost
We have already touched on several topics that can effect the cost of your hosting such as domain use and pre-paid billing issues. There is a huge discrepancy between hosting fees across the industry, and with out the technical specs that hosting companies throw at you, it seems hard to compare apples to apples. You should not pay more than $20 a month for any hosting plan unless you are going to be using a dedicated server in which case $100 a month is about right - or you are getting ripped off. And never prepay for your hosting regardless of the deal offered.
6) Disk Space
This is an area hosting companies like to confuse users with. Companies offer these huge disk storage spaces knowing full well that even a substantial site with a 1000 pages won't use much more than a 100 GB of storage. Don't get fooled into thinking more is better, a website with 200 to 250 GB of storage is plenty for your needs.
7) Script Usage
This is an important element to consider.
