Selecting a Web Host

If you have never gone through the process of selecting a web host, it can be intimidating and confusing, especially for novices. It can also be very costly if you select an unreliable host. On the other hand, the process of evaluating web hosts can be pretty easy if you have access to the right information. Whether you’re planning on running a tiny hobby site or maybe even a large, full-scale e-commerce site with all the bells and whistles, we have provided a set of guidelines to select a web host that you can use no matter what the size of the web site that you’re planning for.

This article is especially useful for first time buyers of web hosting who can use this guide to make an educated decision when purchasing their first hosting plan. While knowing all of the intricacies behind hosting a website will not be necessary, knowing a little bit about the subject can go a long way in helping you make the right choice. We have provided a checklist of items that you should know about when selecting a web host for the first time. Your web hosting requirements can be very different depending on your budget and your overall goals for the site.

IMPORTANT NOTICE for Beginners & Non-Technical People:

How to Pick a Better Web Host

If you are an experienced webmaster, and you are comfortable enough selecting your own web host or if you’d just like to learn how to pick out a better one after having had a bad experience with your first web host, we’ve included a set of guidelines for selecting a hosting company and a chart of recommended service providers that we compiled based on the most important criteria used to measure the quality of any web hosting company. We wanted to take the hassle out of comparing web hosts for first timers and provide specific recommendations to eliminate the guess work when selecting a hosting company.

We did an analysis of 50 of the most widely recognized web hosting companies based on 6 categories of quality for web hosts. We then narrowed it down to a list of the Top 10 “most recommended web hosts” that you can use as a reference in your selection process. We have ranked each web host on a score from 0 – 100, with 100 being the highest score possible.

In our analysis of the best web hosts to choose from, we have taken into consideration the following items of interest:

• Customer Feedback
• Technical Support
• Reliability / Uptime
• Features & Capabilities
• Length of Time in Business
• Pricing

Top 10 Most Recommended Web Hosts

Here is our list of the Top 10 most recommended web hosts according to our 6 categories of importance for web hosting:

Rank	Host Name	Price	Score	Domain	Disk Space	Data Transfer	Money Back	Comments
1	Visit FatCow	$5.50	96	Free	Unlimited	Unlimited	Anytime	Best Overall Visit FatCow
2	Visit JustHost	$3.95	95	Free	Unlimited	Unlimited	90 Days	Editor’s Choice Visit JustHost
3	Visit InMotion	$6.95	95	Free	Unlimited	Unlimited	Anytime	Best Business Host Visit InMotion
4	Visit HostMonster	$3.95	94	Free	Unlimited	Unlimited	30 Days	Best Overall Platform Visit HostMonster
5	Visit Blue Host	$3.95	92	Free	Unlimited	Unlimited	30 Days	Established in 1996 Visit Blue Host
6	Visit WebHostingPad	$4.95	92	Free	Unlimited	Unlimited	30 Days	Low Prices Visit WebHostingPad
7	Visit HostGator	$4.95	92	$15	Unlimited	Unlimited	45 Days	Solid, All-Around Visit HostGator
8	Visit LunarPages	$4.95	91	Free	250 GB	2500 GB	30 Days	Great Features Visit LunarPages
9	Visit EasyCGI	$7.96	91	$10	150 GB	150 GB	30 Days	Outstanding Support Visit EasyCGI
10	Visit IX WebHosting	$3.95	89	Free	Unlimited	Unlimited	30 Days	Cheap & Reliable Visit IX WebHosting

Customer Feedback

Customer feedback provides important information about how a hosting company will perform for you and should be at the top of your list when comparing web hosting companies. There are a couple of things to keep in mind about customer feedback though. When given the opportunity, customers are 9 times more likely to post a negative comment about any product or service than a positive one. For whatever reason, customers are just more likely to provide comments about a negative customer experience than they are about a positive one. No web hosting company can satisfy 100% of its customers 100% of the time. So don’t be overly alarmed if you find some negative comments about any one particular web host. The fact is that if you look hard enough, you’ll find negative remarks about each and every hosting company.

It’s fairly common for people without any prior knowledge of web hosting to have a bad experience with their first service provider. Often times, people will simply choose the first cheap hosting package that they can find online.

The simple truth is that with web hosting, as in life, you get what you pay for.   However, you won’t necessarily get the best hosting if you buy the most expensive plan.  Some people end up buying the “Super Deluxe” hosting plan, to err on the side of caution, and usually turns out to be way more than they actually need. Either way, it’s no wonder that so many customers end up unsatisfied from their first web hosting experience. There are, however, some web hosting solutions that provide great value, consistent reliability and superior features at a reasonable price. The key is that you have to do your homework.

Technical Support

Technical support is probably the most important aspect of all the things to consider when selecting a web host, especially for the novice customer. Most importantly, don’t select a $5 a month hosting plan and expect instant access to a support technician every time you call in with a problem. If you want solid technical support, you should start with one of the more reputable hosting vendors and then select the hosting plan, at least one level above, the basic package. This will usually ensure a better level of customer service than the basic package usually gets you.

There are 3 basic components to any web hosting business: computer hardware, computer software and man-hours for customer support. The bottom line is that technical support is very costly and is typically the largest expense associated with running a web hosting company. Some hosting providers invest more time, energy and money in their customer support services than others. The level of technical proficiency that you’ll get from each host will also vary. The larger web hosts can spread out their hardware and software costs across a large customer base, but the number of technical support representatives they can hire to support that customer base is limited. Many of the larger, less expensive web hosts have tried to automate as many of the customer support functions as they can by building in capabilities that allow for their customers to make changes directly to their accounts online without having to call in for customer support.

Some hosts also provide customer forums, FAQ’s and help sections to provide support and answer questions for customers so they don’t have to call in. As a new user, you’ll need access to technical support without having to wait a day or more for a response back from customer support. There are competitively priced web hosts that will have the cost of quick personal support built into the price, but that is the exception, not the rule. Most people assume that the cheaper hosting plans would have longer wait times for customer support, but that’s not always the case either.

How Much Technical Support Will You Need?

When deciding on the level of technical support that you’ll need, you can start by asking yourself a few qualifying questions:

• How comfortable are you with technology?
• How important will it be for you to have quick, ready access to technical support?

Generally speaking, the less comfortable you are with technology, the more technical support you will require. If you are a relative beginner and don’t anticipate that you’ll be able to tolerate or handle technical issues, do yourself a big favor and look for the more reliable hosting companies that have better customer support track records. It’s far better to choose a provider that might be a bit more expensive, but you know you can rely on picking up the phone when you’re calling in with a problem. If you just have a small web site or blog and feel confident enough to be able to solve minor technical glitches and issues by yourself, you shouldn’t have any problems with the super low cost hosting packages from the largest hosting companies. If you anticipate having a high volume, high revenue web site, having ready access to technical support will be mission critical. In that case, you should go with one of the more reliable hosting companies and make sure to pay a bit extra for the premium support that you’ll require.

We generally recommend that you select a web host that provides technical support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year. Murphy’s Law applies when it comes to web hosting. Don’t be surprised with technical problems should they occur late on a Sunday night or on a major public holiday. So, make sure your host offers 24/7 support.

Reliability / Uptime

Depending on the nature of your web site, the reliability or the “uptime” of your web hosting service provider can be critically important. Uptime is simple a measure of how often the hosts servers are functioning and available for use. The uptime number is a strong indication of how well a hosting company operates and how reliable their servers will be for you If you’re running a small web site with limited traffic, the uptime of your web host will not be as critical as it will be for a high traffic, high revenue web site. In 2008, Amazon.com’s site went “dark” for about 2 hours and a Wall Street Journal article estimated that Amazon lost an astonishing $29,000 in revenue per minute from the downtime. The simple fact of the matter is that if you’re planning on generating revenue on your web site, the reliability of your web host is CRITICAL to the success of your business. Downtime from your host’s server means lost revenue for your business. Don’t underestimate the importance of reliability and uptime with your hosting provider.

Most reputable companies will offer at least a 99% uptime promise, which is a fairly standard measure of reliability in the industry. If you’re concerned about reliability and uptime issues, you can do a bit of your own research and check out the company’s forums, and see what kind of reliability experiences their customers have had. It’s impossible for any host to offer 100% uptime so don’t be fooled by any offer that guarantees that.

Look for hosts that can offer a minimum of 99% uptime and preferably 99.9% uptime, a decidedly stronger indicator of reliability.

Features and Capabilities

Here is a list of hosting features and capabilities that you should be familiar with:

1. Data Transfer – Data transfer (also sometimes referred to as traffic or bandwidth) refers to the amount of raw data (in bytes) being transferred from your host’s server to your web site’s visitors when they browse your site. Most personal web sites and smaller business sites don’t transfer a large amount of data because most of these sites are typically just web pages with simple text and graphics. Hosting companies try to take advantage of this fact by promoting “unlimited bandwidth” plans, but the reality is that there is no such thing as an unlimited bandwidth plan. Since the host ultimately has to bear all of the costs of data transfer, be careful with “unlimited” plans if you’re planning on hosting large data files, such as video files or PDF documents. Many small website operators hosting video clips and PDF’s have gotten a rude awakening when they receive a huge bill for exceeding their “unlimited” bandwidth plan. The hosting company will not silently bear the costs of moving all of that data and many small website operators have found out the hard way that hosting video on a supposed “unlimited” bandwidth plan can get very expensive, very fast. So if you’re planning on hosting PDF documents or video clips on your web site, make sure that you ask specifically about how unlimited the unlimited bandwidth plans actually are.
2. Disk Space – Disk space is also often sold by web hosts the same way, who tout “unlimited disk space” offers in their hosting plans. Don’t be fooled by this notion of unlimited disk space. Most web sites, especially those with simple text and graphics, require very little disk space. Unless you’re hosting video files, you are unlikely to use all of the space provided for in the typical entry level web hosting plan. If a web host offers substantially more disk space than comparable hosts, don’t let that factor weigh too heavily when choosing a provider. More importantly, make sure that the hosting plan that you choose offers room to increase your disk space incrementally as you add more web pages, blog posts, and files over the life cycle of the web site. The amount of disk space offered by a web host will typically only matter if your site grows far beyond your initial projections. In order to plan for growth in the future, just make sure that your host can easily add on disk space if and when you need it down the road.
3. Server Type – There are 2 types of servers: Windows and Unix. The type of server that you select really boils down to what type of language your web site will be written in. If you’re planning on building your web site using ASP as a programming language, you’ll need to look for a Windows server. A more viable option for most web developers is a Unix-based server running Apache that can use HTML or PHP as a programming language. Unix-based web hosts include systems like Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Solaris, among others. The main differences that separate Windows and Unix servers are cost and flexibility. Windows servers are run on Windows’ proprietary operating system (IIS) and MS-SQL database that require licensing fees to run. Unix-based servers are typically run on free, open source programming languages such as PHP, making them cheaper with more configurable options and features which are also typically more stable than Windows-based servers and operating systems. If you’re planning on running your web site with a blogging platform like WordPress or TypePad that uses a content management system which dynamically generates web pages from a database, a Unix-based Apache server is really the only way to go, in my opinion. Additionally, information about configuring Apache servers is freely and widely available online.
4. Control Panel (Cpanel) – A control panel host (also known as a Cpanel) is simply a web-based user interface that allows users to access files and folders on a website without having to know how to use a file transfer protocol program (FTP). A Cpanel allows web site operators you to manage various parts of your web site by yourself without requiring customer support’s assistance. Cpanel will allow site owners to manage email address accounts and upload files and images online. While Cpanel functionality is called different things by different web hosts, make sure you have some type of similar administrative access to your web site that doesn’t require technical support every time you want to make a small change to your account, such as adding an email address or changing a password. It’s more hassle than it’s worth if you are forced to wait for their technical support to make simple account changes, so make sure that you have some type of cPanel access to your account.
5. Functional Capabilities – We’ve provided a list of features that you should make sure are ALL available to you with any hosting plan that you select:
   • FTP – you’ll need FTP capability to move large files back and forth
   • PHP 4/5
   • Perl
   • SSI
   • .htaccess
   • Telnet / SSH
   • MySQL – required to run a blog or any type of content management system
   • Crontabs
   • SSL / Shopping Cart Functionality – You’ll need SSL capability to collect credit card payments on your site
6. Email – If you have your own site, you need to have your own email address, like your_name@your-domain.com, etc. Nothing looks cheesier than going to a contact page of a nicely designed website to find a primary contact email address of jsmith1986@yahoo.com or webguy123@gmail.com. While there’s nothing wrong with free email clients like Yahoo and Gmail, if you’re running a business, having a free email address on your business contact page sends the wrong message to your potential customers. It calls into question the legitimacy of the business overall – if you can’t spend a few pennies for your email address, where else are you going to cut corners with your customers? Using your_name@your-domain.com looks much more credible and professional for your customers. Other features to look for with respect to email capabilities include autoresponders, POP mailboxes and email aliases that you can use to effectively segment and manage the communication with your visitors and potential customers.

Length of Time in Business

It’s very important to choose a well-established hosting provider, one that has been in the marketplace for a number of years. If you’re unsure about how long a host has been operating, call the company and ask a customer service representative when the company started doing business. Another great way to check how long a web host has been in business is to check the WHOIS registration information for their web site. You can check WHOIS registry data at sites like http://whois.domaintools.com. Type the domain of the web host in the Search Box. Look in the WHOIS Registry Data section and you’ll find the domain “creation” date. The domain creation date will give you a rough idea of when the company started doing business.

Stay away from web hosts with less than 2 years of operating experience. While some of these newly launched hosting companies might be above board and perfectly suitable, companies with only a few years in the market are much more likely to go under than companies that have been around for 5-10 years. Many people have made the mistake of trusting their hosting with newly formed small companies that end up going out of business after only a year or two. One way of ensuring that the company you select won’t go out of business tomorrow is to select hosts that have a long operating track record of at least 5 years, and preferably longer than that.

Pricing

We purposefully listed price last in our categories to consider because, in our opinion, price should be the last thing that you consider when choosing a web host. The field of web hosting is extremely competitive which forces the competition to keep their pricing in a fairly tight range. Unfortunately, most people make their decision solely based on price, which leads to scores of unhappy customers’ year in and year out. Above all, do not select a web host solely because they offer the cheapest pricing.  Again, that is the most common mistake that individuals and start up businesses make when selecting a web hosting. You should shop for a web host based on the recommendations and experience of other people who have used the host’s services.

Many people ask about paying upfront for an annual plan that offers a cheaper rate than if you were to pay only monthly. The problem with paying upfront is that you don’t want to be stuck with a host should you be unsatisfied with their service. Until you can be assured of the host’s reliability and level of service, paying monthly will give you the flexibility to easily switch web hosts without having to fight to get your money back with the old host. While many web hosts offer a money back “guarantee” for prepaid yearly hosting plans, most of the time the guarantee is only good for the first 30 days of service which is hardly enough time to legitimately judge the performance of a web host. Go with the monthly plan first until you are satisfied with the host’s reliability and service, after which you can change payment plans to the discounted annual plans.

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