So you've decided to create a website. Whether you're writing a blog, selling merchandise, building a home for your business, or anything else, the first thing you'll need to do is find the best web hosting possible. The good news is that millions have been there before you, and some excellent services have established themselves at the top of the game.
I advise that you identify the primary purpose of your website before you start looking. Otherwise, you'll be unsure what exactly you're looking for. Once you have a strong idea in your mind, take a look at the best hosting comparison site, keeping an eye on the following factors. One good comparison site is Hosting Foundry, it rank web hosts based on speed, uptime, support, server specs, usability, cost/value ratio, and a few more factors.
Reliability
First and foremost, you need to know that whoever hosts your site is extremely reliable. While some services in life can afford to be unreliable occasionally, web hosting cannot. Quite simply, if the hosting isn't reliable, neither is your website going to be. Outages are inevitable, no matter how well-established or consistent a hosting service is. That's just the reality of web hosting. However, these outages should be extremely rare and brief. A few hours can be very costly to you or your business.
This is why some prefer to choose older, more well-known names than newer upstarts. The new hosting services may well be reliable and may offer more at a lower price. Whether you are ready to risk your website on their early promise depends on your personality and risk aversion.
Range of plans
Web hosting should never be looked at as a one-size-fits-all endeavor. A huge ecommerce website should not be using the same hosting as a personal blog (or anything close). But this is true even of individual websites. What starts out as a personal blog may turn into a lucrative webzine or become a place to sell your arts and crafts.
This means it is ideal that the hosting you choose has a range of plans that suit various purposes, and that it should be easy to upgrade (or downgrade) when the time comes.
Pricing
Depending on the kind of hosting you want, you'll have to pay a certain price. If you're running a major business, that price is obviously going to be much larger, and probably won't be your deciding factor. However, when you are running something smaller and more personal, cost is quite important. Good hosting does not necessarily cost more. In fact, some excellent web hosting services will cost you a couple of dollars a month. This should be affordable no matter what kind of a month you're having. Hosting is not a subscription you ever want to let lapse.
User Reviews
Customer service and experience is very important when it comes to web hosting, as you need someone on their side to always be available to help you with technical factors. When things go wrong, you need to know that they won't leave you in the dark about what's happening.
Read customer reviews to see how customers rate the service they're given. If the customer reviews are bad, then you should be wary about expert reviews that say different.
