When I started my first website the best web hosts were determined by the size of disk space they provided. Everybody wanted to get as much space as possible. Things have changed. Nowadays space isn’t the crucial factor.

5 Most Important Hosting Features are:

1. Reliability:
The main function of a web host is making your web site available for other users of Internet all the time. Well, mostly all of the time. The best web hosts are operational more than 99.5 % of their time and they guarantee it. Stay away of web hosts that don’t give you such guarantee.

2. Support
This one is extremely important. Web hosts usually offer telephone support, live chat and email support. Make sure you have support available any time you need it. And I really mean anytime. If you can’t contact your web host during the weekend you have a potential problem. The best thing to do is to test them. Call them to see how responsive they are. If they don’t respond to your email in a timely manner consider choosing another host.

3. Price
You would be fooling yourself if this wasn’t an important factor. The thing is, price is connected with the first two factors. Higher prices do not make a good web host, but they raise the chance of getting good support and high reliability. I learned this lesson myself.

When I started my first web page I had a very low budget. I found a cheap hosting that promised me almost anything, but soon made my life full of painful moments. My web site was constantly up and down, without them even knowing that. My visitors were complaining they couldn’t send me emails. I tried to contact this web hosting company but they were unresponsive for several days. Soon I had nothing else to do than move my files to another host. That was the last time I had chosen a cheap web host.
Now best web hosts come with a money back guarantee which is great – don’t even bother with a web host that doesn’t offer you that.

4. Control Panel
Control panel is the page from which you control everything about your web site. You log in to control panel using your user name and password. You can edit your files there, add new email accounts, see usage of your disk space or statistics of your visitors to name just a few. There are differences in control panels among hosts so make sure your control panel can do what you want. You don’t wanna call your web host every time you want to know how many visitors you had last week.

5. Technical details
Disk space: is the amount of space you get. Most web hosts give you more space than you can use.
Data transfer: is the amount of data transferred from your site to your visitors.
Email: number of email accounts you can open.

To sum up – these are indicators of a good web host:

• 99.5% + up time
• 24/7 support
• price: what you pay is what you get
• powerful control panel
• Reasonable amount of disk space and data transfer

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Find out how to select a Web host with our Hosting Wizard.

Do you want to pay a lot of money for hosting just a few pages? Do you want to give your hard earned money away for some high-tech features you don`t even need? This is the time you should loudly say: No!

Hosting industry is so competitive that if smaller hosts don`t follow the leaders, who are constantly upgrading their plans, they soon have to face their end.

So You and Me, who are looking for a best purchase, check the prices and the size of hosting plans (100 GB, 300 GB, …) and go to the ones with best value. But we seldom ask ourselves if we are ever going to use that much space, that much bandwidth. The truth is: WE WONT!

So what should YOU do to save huge money choosing a Web Host?

Before even thinking of pulling credit card out of your wallet you should learn the basics of web hosting. That is about different hosting types, about Windows or Unix hosting, and what is important when choosing a Host).

Next, You should examine your needs and see what your site actually needs ( how much space, bandwidth, how many domain names, how many email accounts,…)

Now, after you have answered questions above, is time to go looking for a Web Host.

You can search for the hosting the old way – going to search engine, searching for hosting phrases or web hosting reviews sites or you can go one level higher. You can use our Hosting Wizard to choose it for you! All you have to do is follow a simple wizard and you will instantly have carefully selected deals from reputable hosting companies on your desk.

Go to their website and ask them anything you like about web hosting. Now you are ready to sign-up.

Remember: Even if there is something wrong with the host, you will have a 30 day money-back guarantee, so you have nothing to worry about!

Different needs – Different Hosting types

Free hosting – is what the name says!

Means that you don’t have to pay any money for hosting services. In practice it is not a very good option, I have been disappointed many, many, many, many times. But people just cant resist when something is free. Wrong! If you want a personal blog where you will just occasionally post some of your thoughts than go to Blogger . Its great! And its free! For everything else, especially for business get yourself a decent hosting provider. Look at our Best Hosts if you don’t have a clue what to choose.

Shared hosting

Means you share your files with other sites on the same server. This is extremely popular hosting type, since it is very affordable. You get your account packed with lots of space and bandwidth most users will never use. I have several shared hosting accounts for my websites and I recommend you to get yourself one of these .

Reseller hosting

Now if you want to make money in hosting industry, than Reseller hosting is just for you! You can start easily and with no costs. Just apply and set up a web host under your own brand, pricing structure and everything else. You will be provided with everything you will need and the money is also very good!

VPS

If you plan to have lots of domain names you should get yourself a Virtual Private Server – it is a extremely good deal, because Virtual Server is almost like a real one. Virtual means that you split hardware with other users on the same machine, and that cuts the operating costs. That way you get everything you need for a price just a bit higher than shared hosting. Oh, did I mention you can install your own software, scripts and stuff. However, if you don’t know what is root access, Apache or MySQL you should rather start with shared hosting.

Dedicated Server

Ah, that is a Dream of every Web master who starts doing business. Dedicated means that the whole server – machine – is reserved for 1 and only 1 website. Here is the deal: web hosts rents you one computer, software and a high speed Internet connection that is fast like a lightning. Dedicated servers hosting is the most powerful and most complex hosting. If your site receives a huge amount of traffic every day, you should get one of these.

Managed hosting

There is one drawback with dedicated hosting. If you are not a computer geek it could be hard to manage it. And that is exactly why hosting providers now offer Managed hosting – an expanded dedicated server hosting. Where with dedicated server you had to control the server 24/7, with managed hosting – the provider does that. So it is like a regular dedicated hosting with maintenance and monitoring 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Colocation

There is one other type of hosting which is not so common, but is pretty cool for clients who have lots of websites. It is called Colocation. It is a type of hosting where you bring your machine to a hosts data center. You are in total control of the server all the time. And the hosting company rents you rack space, high speed connection to Internet backbone, environment suitable for servers ( controlled air temperature, security, redundancy) and IT staff available for help.

Clustered hosting

Now that is it for regular websites. But what hosting types use the biggest sites and the sites with traffic of several thousands users an hour? I always knew there was something more…And there is! It is called Clustered hosting – This is a hosting type with lots of dedicated servers bonded together. It can be a minimum of 2 and up to several hundred servers and more (I believe Google has about 450.000 servers around the globe).Clustered means that the same page or service is served on multiple servers (often called mirrors). This enables high redundancy and great access speeds on different continents. Well if you are lucky enough to host a clustered website let me know!
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If you are not sure which hosting is right for you, don’t worry! Go to our Hosting Wizard and discover which host suits you best! If you still cant decide send us an email with your details. We will help you!