Challenge in Choosing Best Web Hosting

There are enormous web sites hosting companies present in the world but to choose the best web hosting company is considered a problem these days. A best website hosting provider mainly satisfies its customers and provides the best web hosting service. While choosing the best web hosting plans you must consider few things so that you would get the bet web hosting online service, which would keep your site online 24/7.

Types of Hosting Services

Web hosting services have been categorized as listed below, as provided by a best web host: -

•  Free Hosting
•  Virtual Hosting

Free Hosting
Free sites are for people whose sites are small and do not expect much traffic. 

Advantages of free web hosting include

•  It's Free 
•  For small non-business sites

Disadvantages of free web hosting are:

•  No usage of domain names
•  Limited technical support
•  Unreliability of servers, software
•  Limited web space, technical support
•  Host may shut down due without notice

Virtual Hosting: (also known as domain or shared hosting).

This is the most popular and cost effective form of hosting.

Advantages

•  Low cost 
•  Great for the average business sites 
•  Good technical support 

Disadvantages

•  Multiple sites on server
•  Sometimes slow updates
•  Limited security and control due to the large number of sites on 1 server
•  Use your own domain name (www.yoursite.com)

Some important points listed below would help you to search a better web host.

Best Web Hosting Criteria 1 - Speed and Reliability of the Servers

•  Make sure they have a high-speed connection
 (preferably T3 or higher) to the Internet.

•  Effective Bandwidth Management – 
opt for unlimited bandwidth for your site.

•  Backup Systems – good hosts will have back 
up systems in place to guard against power failures, 
which will cause you to lose data and customers.

Best Web Hosting Criteria 2- Support services

What is the quality of the existing customer?

Ask for any BIG present customers that are hosting with that service. 

What do customers say about this company?

Ask for any testimonies of existing customers to get feedback from them concerning reliability and support.

How stable they are?

You do not want your hosting service to go out of business (like what happened to many of the free hosts) and leave you stranded. Check how many years they have been in business.

Know about their support and response

Make sure you can contact them 24/7 by phone or email. Test the quality and efficiency of response by sending them an email pertaining to some question you may have before you sign up.

Features

Best Web Hosting Criteria 3 - Compatibility with existing Software

Is your host's server, software and support service compatible with the skills and software you are using? For example if you are using FrontPage to create your site, make sure they have FrontPage extensions installed on their server.

Some of the basic features of a hosting service should include:

1. Domain name registration
2. At least 5MB of allocated space
3. Unmetered bandwidth
4. Free Technical Support 
5. POP3 E-Mail Accounts 
6. Email Forwarding 
7. Email Auto-responders 
8. Email Aliases 
9. FTP Access 
10. FrontPage Support 
11. Own CGI-Bin Access
12. Free Perl, CGI 
13. Server Side Includes (SSI) 
14. Password Protection 
15. Reseller/referral program

Flexibility – Keep in mind the future needs of your web site. If the traffic to your site explodes, or in the future you may need a database solution then your host must be able to accommodate the changes.

A best web hosting company would certainly have enough features to satisfy their customers, hence providing best web hosting solution.