Secrets of Selecting A Web Hosting Provider

To compile your list of web hosting providers, you first search for unbiased reviews. Best place to obtain a third party review is to check the latest reviews on forums. A web hosting provider should be a registered company and not an individual; check the BBB (Better Business Bureau).

Now, that you have established your list, gather these important details about each company:

• Has the provider been in business for 3 or more years;
• Is the provider incorporated, have a logo, physical address and phone number (preferably a 1-800 number);
• Does the provider have leading edge technology and works with a professional website designer;
• Does the provider have a reliable server with sufficient back up; that is, it has 24/7 monitoring capable of handling any emergency;
• Does the provider have 24/7 client support both by email and phone;
• Does the provider offer a money back guarantee, especially if you choose to switch companies;
• Does the provider guarantee 99.5% or higher uptime;
• Does the web hosting package offer 2 mega bites of band width or more which is enough for minisites unless you intend on having a lot of downloads of software, audio or video;
• Does the provider offer sufficient disk space; 5 mega bites is ample for a minisite unless you have a lot of pictures, videos or mp3;
• Does the provider offer email accounts; for a mini site 10 is usually enough;
• Does the web hosting package include PHP, Perl, Cgi-bin, SSL, MySQL, and Shopping Cart. If not what is the added monthly cost for these additional programming languages;
• Does the provider offer both Windows 2000 and Linux server. Linux is cheaper and if you are not running Microsoft SQL server database, or Microsoft Active Server pages, then Linux server will almost certainly be fine;
• Does the provider provide multiple domains or sub domains;
• Does the provider offer a free domain;
• Does the provider offer web design tools as well as the right to become an affiliate;
• Does the provider offer various packages and are these packages competitive.

Keep in mind that having capable 24/7 support and a completely reliable provider is more important than saving a few dollars per month.