How to Choose the Right Web Hosting

Finding a reliable web host is not an easy undertaking for any person or business. There are so many web hosting providers out there that it can be difficult to determine which are the most relevant for your needs. You could go on the basis of reviews, but these can be, and are constantly manipulated by providers either submitting fake reviews or paying others to do this on their behalf. This isn't just a problem for the prospective web hosting client, but is also a problem for the reputable web hosting company. Competition is fierce, and it's hard for a quality web host to be found amongst the mass of opportunistic, low quality, poor service providers that saturate the web.

The only reviews you can reliably act on and trust are those that might come from your friends and family. Of course, their requirements for their website might not be the same as yours, but at least they will be able to give you an insight on the quality of service, support, and responsiveness they have experienced from their host when the proverbial doo-doo hits the fan.

These days you should expect to have almost instant access to technical support from your web host. As I've already mentioned, web hosting is competitive, and it's much easier to keep clients than win new ones. So it's important for web hosts to treat their web hosting clients well, and give then the support they need when they need it. Quality web hosts know this, and those that don't though they may be large enterprises at the moment â€" will learn the hard way.

Web hosting clients has the right to be demanding, and a feature of any quality hosting plan these days is live chat support â€" and often telephone support. Like an insurance policy, you never realise how much you might need this until you actually do. Who is on the other end of the chat sessions is another story, and so many hosts, even those that provide this feature, populate their support centers with support monkeys: barely competent, barely literate chat responders, that are quick to say what they can't help you with, and hardly able to help with the issues that they are obliges to help you with.

Ultimately, web hosting is a relationship between client and web host, and like any relationship, the other party on the web hosting side of that relationship will reveal themselves in time. With this in mind, it may be wise to start with a new host by taking up the lowest level hosting plan first, and see how it goes with that web host - and upgrade as the level of trust you have in your new web host grows. Every web host is rightly forced to justify their own financial existence by the level of service they provide to their customers, so don’t give them an easy ticket.

Another option is to go with a web host that offers a free trial â€" and take things from there. Intuitively, this may seem like a good idea, but there is always the possibility that you will get a different level of service during this "honeymoon period"â€" than you get when it is over. Once over, the unscrupulous web host will know that you have gone to the trouble of migrating your site to them, are paying your fees, and will be far less inclined to undertake a subsequent painful move to a different provider - no matter what level of service you get. Saying all this, and not wanting to inject further paranoia into your decision making, a generally good idea is to maintain the account you have with your current web host until you have reason to commit to a new one.

You can of course take a stab at conducting your own assessment. First of all, consider your site, and think about what you will need to develop and/or support your website. Do you need lots of space, lots of bandwidth, or both? Or do you simply need a basic hosting package for now, with the flexibility of extending your services quickly and easily as you your website may grow and get more popular.

These possibilities really covers the scenarios that most prospective web hosting client will find themselves in, so it is a very good idea to find a web host that provides for all of these possibilities and enables you to upgrade at the click of a button as and when required. This was a particularly important consideration for us when we established our range of web hosting plans at TimeCriticalSolutions.com , and I’m to proud to say that we do a good job of accommodating these requirements.

I wish you all good luck in finding your next web hosting provider. Remember, there are very good hosts out there that actually care about service and operate with a high level of professional integrity. In the end, make your choice, but don’t commit completely until you have good, consistent reason to do so from your own experience. After all, your own experience is the only recommendation you can trust and truly takes full account of your needs.

Charles Kyriakou Founder & CTO Time Critical Solutions (TeCS) Ltd www.TimeCriticalSolutions.com