You probably already aware that there is a large number of hosting services available to choose from. For someone who has never hosted a website before, finding good web hosting can be very daunting and challenging. This article goes through 4 criteria which you should use when choosing a service to use.

1. Downtime

If you don’t know what downtime is, it refers to the average amount of time your server is down over a month or an entire year. When the server hosting your website is down, this effectively means that your website is no longer online and visitors cannot visit your site. An optimal level of downtime is 0.1% over a month and 1% over an entire year. Anything more than that is regarded as unacceptable and you should discontinue using that web hosting service.

If you want to find out the downtime of a web hosting service, your best option is to contact someone you know who has that web hosting service and ask them what the average downtime is. In addition, you can look through online forums for such information.

2. Price

The wide range of prices for hosting is probably what confuses newbies the most, especially when the features of 2 packages are similar. I have to admit that there are many hosting providers who charge far more than they should because they want to be seen as more “high quality” and want to take advantage of the newbies on the market. This is certainly not a feature of good web hosting. After more than 2 years in Internet marketing, I have to say that price is not a sign of quality when it comes to hosting. There are plenty of cheap web hosting providers that give you more than you need at a low price.

3. Support

When it comes to hosting websites, you will almost always come across technical issues. As a result, you must choose a hosting service which will give you the fastest support so that any problems are fixed as quickly as possible. Depending on the size of your business, a technical issue could mean losses of hundreds if not thousands of dollars. The best support mechanism that you should look out for is live chat service which has a short waiting time.

4. Reputation

By far, the best indicator of good web hosting is the reputation of the provider. If someone you know is recommending one to you or if you find a lot of people raving about the service on online forums, then you know that it must a good one. This is the most reliable criteria and can quickly make it easier for you to find a decent web hosting service.

What I Recommend

Over the last 2 years, I’ve only used 1 hosting service and that has been Hostgator. I was introduced to this by one of my Internet marketing mentors when I just got started online and haven’t looked back since. It complies with all 4 criteria above and most importantly it has a great reputation online. I highly recommend it if you want good web hosting today.

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You need to consider some factor while choosing best web hosting service. Almost every provider claim that they are best in service and least expensive. This fraction makes it little bit difficult. You need to consider following step.

Your needs:

The first step is to understand your need. The need of personal website hosting is different than the company need. It is better that you consider your need in near future.

Rate:

Different companies offering variety of rate. Dedicated server hosting is costly than shared hosting. International companies might be cheaper than Usa base hosting companies. Price is not the only factor you should consider. Free hosting is good for family sites and fun sites. If you are even a small internet marketer, you should choose paid hosting.

Reliability and Speed:

All major webhosting services offer 99% up time. Also your site should be easily and quickly accessible. If your major traffic is from Usa, your hosting should be in Usa only.

Data Transfer and Disk Space:

Your bandwidth will grow with your site. Your data transfer usage will decide your bill. It is better to pay for required data transfer than got surprise bill for considerable higher bandwidth usage. You must consider your future disk space usage while choosing it. For most of website it is less than 4 GB.

Technical Support:

It is important for you that webhosting provider have 24/7 support.

Control Panel:

It is very difficult to contact customer care to change email address or to modify password. It is better to choose webhosting provider that gives you more control and flexibility.

DreamHost is very good hosting service. Read our complete DreamHost Review . You can also use Dreamhost promo couponsto get discounts. With coupons you can get your sites hosted at $2.38/Month. DreamHost is better for personal and professional use.