How to choose a web host?

By Pachi | Jul 17, 2008

Choosing a web host for your web site is like trying to buy fish from a fish market, with everyone selling the same thing with little variation or none at all. It is very difficult to choose the best web host without proper research. I have tried to jot down a few important points to watch out when subscribing with a web host.

When choosing a web host, you may have to spend some time researching them before putting your foot in there. At the very least you must

Read reviews about them
Try to contact someone who knows more about them

The parameters that we need to consider will basically boil down to

Support
Performance of the server
Ease of use

Support

This is one of the most important factor you need to consider. Never neglect this. With server outrage and other all sorts of problems that are quite common, you may have to contact your support for one thing or the other. If they take too much time or uncooperative, there is no point continuing with their service.

To check on support

Contact the customer support and see how much time they take to respond, typically it should take a few hours for them to reply, and at most 24 hours, if they are taking too much time, you might have to rethink about them.
Check the quality of reply. Did you get what you want?Was there clarity in their answer? etc

Performance

You don’t want your visitors to close the browser because your website is taking too much time to load. Especially in shared hosting, time outs are pretty common. You need to confirm that your site wont face a similar fate.

To check on performance

Use services to check the up-time using services like www.site24×7.com. Anything around 97-98% is acceptable depending on the type of website you are hosting, if the server has too much downtime, then it is a strict NO.
If they give free trial, use it to test the performance. Upload your blog, CMS etc and check the execution time, compare this with standard values and decide on if this is satisfactory
Find sites which are hosted there and check their performance.

Ease of use

You do not want to spend half the time searching for a button or figuring out how to do.

To check ease of use

Almost all web hosts have a demo control panel and see if it is easy to use. The standard control panels currently in the market are Cpanel for linux and Plesk for windows environment
Check If they allow ssh access, there is a bit of learning to do, but once you are familiar, there is no easier and powerful way of controlling your account