Shopping for Web Hosting Services

I promised the other day that I would share my "knowledge" on web hosting. This is only in case you want to go "solo" on a platform like Wordpress.org or Movable Type - I have done this on one of my older blogs. It's not necessary on free hosting services like Blogger and Wordpress.com.

This is the information that helped me decide on the web hosting service to choose (I have ordered the list in according to what I find most important):

1. Space on their server: 1 GB is acceptable
2. Data transfer capacity (the size of documents you can transfer at once): 5 GB is acceptable, 10 GB is better, more only if you need to transfer huge quantities of documents.
3. 24/7 tech support: you need help for when the site crashes or something doesn't work anymore! There should be a phone number associated with the tech support, so you can call them up immediately and not have to wait who-knows-how-much for an email reply. I can tell you, this is 24/7 tech support with phone number is one of the hardest (and most important things) to find in a web hosting service.
4. Cost: I deliberately did not put this item first, since it is too often the case that people go for a cheaper service that offers almost nothing and it's in the last instance, useless. Too cheap usually means bad quality, lousy tech support or something like this. One aspect is to check if the price of the hosting per se is cheap, to compare it with the cost of the purchase of domains. I found that in some cases services were cheaper but were more than compensated by outrageously expensive domains.
5. Money Back Guarantee: there should be a clause in your contract to give you money back within a trial period (usually 30 days). This way you can make sure that, if you discover that the server is going down a lot, you can withdraw from the scheme.
6. Location: it is best if you use a web hosting service that is roughly in your area. If you live in the US and the web hosting is in Singapore, it's not a very good thing. Having an address of the company is usually an advisable thing.
7. Testimonials: it's best if you do a bit of research around the web hosting service you want to choose. Best idea is to pick up two-three web services, make a table and compare them. After that, search for testimonials online about the service. Of course, these have to be taken with a grain of salt. Sometimes there are awards given to some hosting services (mine had one) for good service / quality, that helps.
8. Length of Contract: usually services offer a pay-by-month cost and pay-per-year price (cheaper). Make sure you're not signing into a yearly or double-yearly pay when you don't want to.
9. Control Panel for web services: the most well known is CPanel. It's quite good.
10. Email Accounts: preferably unlimited, so you can play around with it
11. Number of Domains allowed: preferably unlimited, or at least more than 10, particularly if you want to play around with blogs.
12. Number of Databases allowed: also preferably unlimited
13. The Web Hosting service MUST support PHP 5, MySQL and CGI. That may sound Chinese but it's necessary if you're going to do much with your blog.
14. Existence of a User Forum to post questions
15. Existence of Tutorials to guide you
16. (optional) Fantastico DeLuxe: this is a little program that installs other programs that you need for blogs. For instance, installing Wordpress.org is very easy with their help. However, it's not mandatory as you can install the stuff yourself.
17. Online Website Builders / Frontpage extensions: can be quite handy, but I never used them. If you use CPanel and Wordpress.org, for instance, they have sufficient help online to manage without these. Frontpage might be quite handy though to modify the standard templates, particularly if you don't know css and html well.
18. FTP accounts: you may use this to 'beam up' your documents online. CPanel, however, has this feature integrated and it works very well.
19. other free programs and perks: usually hosting services offer programs for free, some of which can be quite good and others useless. I didn't find these extra things to be something I base my decision on, but some people might.
20. the Operating Program the web hosting program is using. This may be Windows, Linux or Unix. I found that Linux /Unix systems are cheaper and they are reputed to be quite good, so don't be put down by the name. You won't have to use Linux / Unix on your computer, this is just their toy to play with!

My advice is to shop around on the internet, select 5-6 services, make a table with the main issues and compare them; then cut down to 2-3 that you investigate for testimonials and may ask questions of. Sometimes you may have to compromise on some issues; preferably the ones at the bottom of the list rather than the top.

I know this list may sound daunting, but it's better to be thorough than find that the server you paid a lot of money on is down 50% of the time and you can't claim your money back. Believe me, it happens!