Picking a web host is often a very difficult decision for webmasters, Cost is always going to be a factor, But you also have a lot of other factors to consider to make sure all of your hard work isn’t going to be ruined by an unreliable host.

In this post i am going to help you out by giving you some tips that will make finding that perfect web host a lot easier.

Hosting Requirements

Before you even start looking you need to sit down with a pen and piece of paper (remember those in the old days?) and jot down a list of things your website requires to run. Things like PHP versions, Number of databases and Scripting languages allowed. Once you have a list of all your sites requirements it will be a lot easier to narrow down viable web hosts.

Web Host Reviews

Grab a coffee and get comfy. Now you know what your website needs and have a list of possible web hosts we need to look at what others think. There are some sites that review web hosts, But i would stay away from them, They often have planted reviews and use affiliate links. The best thing to do is just Google the host name i.e “host-domain.com -site:host-domain.com” (without quotes). This will give you pages where the host is mentioned, but not pages from the host.

Don’t dismiss a host if you find one scathing review, Read a lot of reviews and find out what a lot of people think to get an all round idea about how they treat customers. It’s unlikely that any company will go through life getting only positive reviews.

Unlimited Bandwidth

if there is one word that web hosts use very losely it’s the word “unlimited”. While the use of “unlimited” doesn’t make them a bad host, It’s important that you understand that unlimited never actually means unlimited. If they say they allow “unlimited domains” they will probably let you host 10 domains, Probably even 100 domains, But would they let you host a billion domains? No they wouldn’t, That means it’s not “unlimited”.

It’s a lot better to know how much resources, bandwidth, databases, disk space and domains you are allowed than to one day have them point you to the section of their terms that says “reasonable use” to defend their decision to suspend your account for using 10 GIGs of bandwidth on your “unlimited bandwidth” hosting plan.

Test Their Support System

When you have narrowed down the list of possible hosts to 4 or 5 it’s time to start testing their support system. It’s a lot better to know if their response to a problem is going to be “Dunno why it done that” now than when your site actually goes down.

Find an email address, A phone number, Ticket system or contact form, Invent a problem, And see how professional and helpful their reply is.