How to Find the Best Website Host

Unfortunately there is no single best website host as it will depend on individual circumstances.

If you want to simply set-up a personal website or blog you may find that you would be perfectly happy using WordPress.com or Squidoo for free. If you want more control than these services offer, a cheap shared hosting package will meet your needs.

If you want a website for business purposes then you need to find a host that offers everything you need and provides excellent support. The services you need to look for will depend on the software and databases you need and also what you intend to do (will you be selling products or services from the site?). You may well find shared hosting to be fine, at least initially, but if you will be selling and collecting customer data you should consider VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting.

Both business and personal users should expect their best website host to:

* Offer a reasonable volume of storage and bandwidth. “Unlimited” is often quoted but this is meaningless and you should study the small print to see what restrictions there are.

* Offer a speedy and stable service. Your pages should display fast and downtime should be a rare occurrence. An uptime guarantee of upwards of 99.9% should be sought.

* Offer excellent help and support. I consider the standard of support to be of prime importance and would certainly recommend that you put it ahead of price as a criteria for choosing a supplier.

In my view non-business users should go for a Linux package (in the absence of any particular reason to go for Windows).

For business users finding the best website host may take a bit more work. If your site is being built for you consult the developers. They may have produced the site such that it requires a particular environment.

If you will be trading from your site you will need a shopping cart linking to a payment processor. Some hosts offer packages specifically for this whilst others allow you to use 3rd party shopping carts.

The above briefly mentions numerous matters on which you may require further information. This can be obtained by following the links below.

Andy Nataghi is an enthusiast and writer about all things technical and has a particular interest in Best Website Host. To see more detail on the above criteria for assessing hosting providers please visit http://website-hosting-plans.com/hosting-articles