So, you have a nice site made, everything works and looks great – the layout, colour, everything. Now all that’s left to do is get it online. That’s where the web host comes in. But, what should you look for when choosing a web host?

When choosing your web hosting provider, you should check the following points:

  • Does your site run on PHP or ASP/ASP.NET?
    If it runs on PHP, a Linux or Unix operating system and Apache web server would be best. If it runs on ASP, you’ll be wanting IIS (Internet Information Services) and a Windows operating system.
  • How big is your site? Do you need a lot of webspace? Do you expect your site to grow in the future – if you have a forum or portal etc.?
  • What is your budget? If you have a bigger site or if you expect it to get bigger, you’ll need plenty of resources.
  • Do you want/need email accounts for your site? e.g. webmaster@yoursite.com, or will your current email address do?
  • Do you need to have MySQL/Microsoft Access installed on the server for a database your site uses?
  • How much bandwidth to you think you’ll need? This is the amount of data downloaded by your visitors (and robots) to display your site.
  • Do you need/use FTP (File Transfer Protocol)? Some hosts allow you to have multiple FTP accounts which allows different users to access your site and update/modify it.
  • What kind of administration control panel does the host offer? cPanel is used on this site, and it allows you to
    configure your site completely with an easy-to-use interface.
  • Does it offer any “web-install” scripts, where there is a one-click function to install some popular open-source software on your site?
  • What kind of statistics and logging does the host provide?

But the most important features of a web host should undecidedly be:

  • Customer Service – this should be the most important feature of choosing your host. The hosting company should have phone and email support of the highest quality, with friendly and expert staff.
  • Uptime Guarantee- the uptime guarantee should be just as important as the customer service. The host should have an excellent reliability and uptime guarantee so you site stays where it should be – online.