They said Internet (as a virtual space) changes at a much faster rate than the real world. I certainly buy into this idea. As of today, logging in into WordPress.com shows that there are currently:

2,743,286 blogs with 100,421 new posts today.

More than 100 thousands worth of posts in one single day, just on WordPres.com, and it is growing. Well, that would equal to the amount of information I would consume for months. To be more precise, around three months if I read 100 pages of content every day.

Another blog post I stumbled upon is Web hosting now vs 10 years ago. The fact shows that prices are pretty much unchanged now vs. a decade ago. Features are added and there are more room for files and higher data transfer rate and total bytes of transfer.

Certainly prices vary, and if we take inflation and other matters into account, this shows how the industry has evolved to be more affordable for everyone.

In this article, I’m going to reveal the criteria to choose a commercial web host. By the time you finish this article, you should know enough to research and buy the right web host for the home of your business. Read this article if you haven’t convinced yet to avoid free website and hosting deals.

The Fight for Customers — The Tricky Part

The fact is the web hosting industry has grown to the level that none of us could possibly analyze all available companies, let alone the packages that they offer. The role of web hosting review sites and directories is more important now than ever, but they aren’t without their own problems.

Web hosting companies are fighting for customers and in stiff market some people are going to use what we call the grey method of advertising and marketing to get customers. One example is to influence the ranking system of a web hosting review sites. This is a big warning for customers who think they could get honest and objective data from third party sites.

The entire situation in the industry is certainly more complex than that, and it takes a book to write about it. With that said, this article is about how to choose your own web hosting for your website. I think it’s crucial if you keep the tricky parts in mind when pursuing your options.

How to Choose a Commercial Web Host

Despite the common perception that you got what you paid for, the entire hosting industry is so huge it varies between one company to another in terms of policy, marketing and business strategy, product offering and so on. It’s true, the entire industry seems to focus on the features and price. They tend to overlook value-added offer (something web hosting companies should tap into instead of fighting for prices).

However, based on experience, a dedicated server may not be better in performance and reliability compared to a shared hosting server — if a provider knows how to manage it. I’ve seen $49/mo hosting (that’s low end for dedicated server) that performs worse than $5/mo shared hosting. While generally the consensus is to go with at least Virtual Private Server (VPS) for business-grade hosting, it is possible to start with the shared hosting environment if you know how to analyze your options. It saves a lot of initial investment and that certainly is good news for a lot of people.

The following are the criteria I use to assess different web hosting options before picking my choice:

1. Reliability and availability of the server
Web host (and its entire network connection to the Internet) should be reliable and available most of the time so your web site is viewable by the visitors anytime. The industry standard is 99% at the minimum. That translates to about 7-8 hours of downtime per month (assuming 30 days or 720 hours per month). Reliable servers have much less downtime.

2. Disk space and data transfer
Most web hosts provide ample of space and data transfer, but you should be aware of the difference between promise vs. delivered product. Some companies are known to terminate your account without a warning if you use a lot of bandwidth, although it is still well within the limit.

If most of your site content is text and small images, you should worry less about disk space and data transfer. However, if you want to transfer multimedia content, these two factors become critical.

You can calculate a raw number easily by assuming traffic, hits, or pages per unique visitor.

3. Customer support
Does the web host offer 24/7 support? For business hosting, don’t accept a host which doesn’t have staffs working on weekends and public holidays. You want to make sure your problems are handled as fast as humanly possible.

4. Web creation and management features
Know upfront what you need to create your web site. If you want to install your own blog, does it need PHP? Does it need database? Do you want to enable secure connection and collect sensitive data from the Web? What type of control panel are you familiar with?

Can you run the website script in this operating system platform?

If you have several domains that you want to host on the same server, do they allow it? Is there any additional charge for different features?

Some features automatically limit you to the number of packages you can choose. For example, if you need secure server with your own domain, you need dedicated IP address, which is not possible in shared hosting environment. The admin often will charge for additional upgrade or you may prefer VPS or dedicated server.

5. Other features
List other features that you’d like to have in your web host. If you want to use your domain for emails, how many accounts do they allow?

Can you choose and install scripts with the one-click installation feature? Although most hosting companies provide quite a comprehensive list of features, make sure you check them.

6. Geographical location
Where is the location of the server physically? Which connections do they use to connect their servers to the Internet?

If you’re serving mostly local visitors, you want the server to be closer to the geographical area. Make sure they have ample bandwidth to support data transfer. Usually they provide a dummy file for speed test. This is not a proof though as it could be manipulated but it’s better than nothing.

7. Pricing and payment plans
Most people judge quality by the list of features and price. While this provides a ballpark figure of the value vs price comparison, it is far from accurate. Reality differs widely.

Although highest price is not always the best, you should not decide based on price alone. If you know what you want, how much traffic you’d like to handle, the features and type of site you want to run, etc., you can set the budget based on the industry offering right now. However, please don’t sacrifice reliability for price. You’ll thank me later.

Web hosting companies often provide payment plans. Usually the further you paid upfront, the better deal you’ll get in discounts.

8. Third-party reviews
Seek in open forum. Web hosting customers are posting their experience and reviews with their web host for others to see. Sometimes this can be manipulated because anyone can post a new thread. Reputable forum actually confirms that the domain is really hosted on the reviewed web host.

Note that with large hosting companies, it is not possible to satisfy every customer. People have different needs and expectations. A good practice is to find hosts that receive good reviews most of the time.

Conclusion

We don’t live in Utopia. There’s no such thing as perfect web hosting companies. No one has exactly the same requirement. Even if they do, one price is okay for A but too expensive for B. That’s why I can’t provide a specific analysis. It depends on your situation.

With that said, it’s worth repeating that you should not expect top-notch support if you’re paying less than $10 per month for a shared hosting service. Fully managed server could cost from $50 to hundreds.

Usually, most small business owners and affiliates could do just fine with good shared hosting package. When your business grows to the level that you need to upgrade, you can upgrade to a bigger and better package or move to a dedicated server. By that time, you should have allocated the budget for it.

Find it interesting? Read more web hosting articles.