How to Pick a Website Host

How do you pick a good host when there are thousands of hosting companies available? It’s like going through a liquor store trying to pick a good wine by the design on the label. There are lots of choices, but you can never really know for sure until you try one out.

There are some things to watch for that can help you narrow the field to increase your odds for landing with a good host.

Important factors in selecting a web hosting company include the percentage of server uptime. Most hosts boast a 99% uptime these days, so anything less is unacceptable. The more downtime a server experiences the more your site will be adversely affected in search engine rankings, visitor satisfaction, link retention, and other areas.

Of course, there are the obvious requirements: enough bandwidth, enough disk space, a good control panel and other features—but most hosts offer enough in that regard.

The hosting company's data center, support staff, network redundancy, Internet connectivity, physical and online security are more important—but few hosting seekers bother checking anything more than features and pricing.

If all you check is features and pricing you're just hoping to get lucky with your hosting selection...unless you were lucky enough to find this website, where we figure all that into our hosting grades so you don't have to bother with it!

It's boring and tedious checking all those details we mentioned, but you should. If not, use a site like this that offers ratings that aren't discolored by a handful of dissatified users as your guide. A host could have a thousand satisfied users for every dissatisfied user, but you'd never know it because the satisfied users generally aren't going around rating their host.

Yes, it's also boring reading a host's terms of service, but we recommend you do. If you check out even half of what we recommend you'll be miles ahead of just guessing. If not though, follow our guide, or at least get a recommendation from someone. You'll be glad you did.