Up time: You might have only one chance to impress your customer with the reliability of your business. New users will never return to your site if they see “site is down” sign. An uptime of 99.8% or above is a must for any reliable e-business. Note that a guarantee of 99.8% up time means, your site might be down for about 6 hours a month. Most reliable hosts maintain a guarantee of 99.9% uptime.

 

Domain host: It is better that you do not take the domain from your web host, even they offer you a free domain. Please understand that the domain name given to is only valid as long as you are customer for their hosting. If you find their service not up to your expectations and wish to switch to another host, you will find difficulties in transferring your domain name. So, it is better to find a reliable domain name host before deciding a web host. If you do not wish to spend much money with big brand names, you may use cheap domain hosts such as godday, namecheap, name etc.

 

2. How is the customer support?

You need quick and reliable support at the moments of crisis. Most reliable companies offer 24/7 support. One possibility is that you check their responses by sending sales queries. It is possible that sales queries get lower priority but if you do not hear from them for more than 24 hours, you better seek another host. You can also check if the host has a forum. Most reliable hosts run forums, where you will find how well the host runs its business.

 

3. Price and features:

You should not hesitate to spend a few dollars more if you think the hosting provider is more reliable. If you do not expect much traffic to your site and just hosting personal web sites, any hosting provider will be fine. I will suggest you to choose one of those advertisers who offer you terabytes of space and bandwidth. But remember that there are hidden restrictions that will not allow you to use even fraction of the advertised space or bandwidths.

If you are expecting good traffic to your site, please choose a host which offers you realistic space and bandwidths (now a days it is about 2-5GB). It is necessary to do a research of all short listed providers to check the entire specifications of their web hosting deals. This includes essential marketing tools, spam protection, and virus scanning. Besides, please check the web hosts popularity using alexa and google search. If your host is not that busy off late (which you will find from alexa) or you read too many negative comments, it is better to avoid that host.

 

4. Is your plan upgradeable for free or a nominal cost?

As your business grows and bring more and more traffic, will the web hosting company you choose be able to upgrade you without much cost and efforts. By choosing the web host that can give your future expansion, you can save a lot of time and money.

 

5. Single/multiple, shared, semi-dedicated, vps or dedicated?

If you are just starting out you can take the path from left to right shown above. In shared hosting, you have a option to deal with several sites, either yours or your customers, independently. Except for vps (virtual private server) and dedicated, you will share the space with others. So, it is possible that your information is stolen by someone who is sharing the disk with you. If your data is important, it is better you choose a vps or dedicated server.