What to Look For in a Web Host – The 3 Most Important Factors to Consider When Choosing a Web Host

March 2, 2009 by Butterfly Filed under: Web Hosting

So you are ready to start your own website. You got a domain name picked out and you are ready to go, except for one problem: What web hosting program should I use? These are the top 3 things to look for in a web host.

1. What are your web hosting needs?

This is the first thing you need to determine. If you are creating a personal website that will not be visited by many people other than your friends and family, there are free hosting options that you may want to consider. The downside with free hosting is that the provider often places ads on your website and the server have a higher than average down time. If you are looking to create a website like this, you may want to use one of the free blogging platforms, such as Blogger or Wordpress.

But what if you want more? If you plan on developing a website to attract as many visitors as possible, paid hosting is going to be your best option. Many web hosts offer plans for as little as $4 per month. When paying a price this low, there are often restrictions on the amount of bandwidth and features available to you. For example, many hosting providers will limit you to one domain name and 1.5 GB of disk space.

However, if you are willing to pay a few dollars more – usually around $8-$10 per month – most hosting providers allow you to have 50 or more domain names, e-mail accounts, and databases.

2. What are the Web Hosting Features?

The best web hosts provide you with a variety of tools to improve your website without having to be a professional computer programmer. You can set up automatic spam filters, create databases, install Content Management Systems (CMS) such as Wordpress with the push of a button, track your website statistics, and much more. All of these options are available in just about every paid web hosting package and can be found in your cPanel.

3. Web Host uptime and downtime

All of this is well and good, but you also want to find a webhost that has near 100% uptime. This means that the server where your site is hosted never goes down. This is especially important if you are running a business or selling some product or service. The more downtime a server has, the more potential customers you will lose. In reality, you will find that the best web hosting companies have 98% or greater uptime.

When searching for a webhost, keep in mind what your needs are and think about what your future needs might be. If you plan on having more than one website, a cheap paid hosting plan is probably the best. If you plan on creating a full-fledged e-commerce site that attracts thousands of visitors per day, it is more than worth it to pay a few extra bucks per month knowing that your site will almost never go down.