Posted on February 15th, 2011The internet seems to have an endless amount of reviews, articles and opinions about which web host to choose. Web hosts jockey to be the fastest, most reliable, or cheapest service. The sheer number of companies, features, packages and technical terminology can easily overwhelm users inexperienced with web hosting.
Cost of Hosting
A vast majority of people end up choosing their website host based on price. While budget is of course a priority, most people change webhosts because of service or performance. Try to focus in on hosts that rate well with customer support and network performance. Nothing is more infuriating than waiting for your own website to load, or staring at a “page cannot be found” error message for 24 hours while you wait for a response from your website host. The truth is, most webhosts that compete in the shared hosting market are competitive in pricing and most offer some basic plan for $5 or less per month.
Start with the basics
Begin by disregarding 90% of the listed features. Know what you need in a web host. Be realistic in the features you require, the traffic you expect to receive and technologies you plan to utilize. If you look at the features listed on any host’s website on average there are over 75 items listed. A novice who wants to start a personal blog will need no more than 5 of the features listed. Know which features YOU will use and actually need is key.
Choosing the Host
Most visitors to WebsiteHosting.com will find shared hosting more than sufficient for their needs. This market offers affordable, full-featured hosting for under $10/month. Go to our Shared Hosting page for more detailed information about shared website hosting.
If that’s the case than what separates the good ones from the bad ones? Like any service-based industry, it’s all about personal experiences. I have been developing websites for over 12 years and would safely estimate trying over 40 web hosts in that time. I think I can also safely say that I have experienced downtime with EVERY one of them at one point or another. On the other hand, I have never used all the storage provided to me. Only twice in a decade have I run into a server performance issue and they were both for extremely resource intensive custom applications. Based on that, you can see why most hosts offer Unlimited Storage and Bandwidth, you’ll never use enough of either for them to be worried about it. However, none advertise 100% up-time. 99.9% up-time is the industry standard. This equates to about 45 minutes of downtime per month. Personal websites, blogs and even informational business websites can live with 45 minutes of downtime.
If you don’t like it, try another
Don’t be afraid to change web hosts. I don’t know any reputable webhost that does not offer some sort of money back grace period to try out their service.