There are hundreds and hundreds out in the wild, all with a variety of features at and prices, so choosing the right one can easily become a task. Find out all you need to know to choose the best webhost for you right here, right now.
The very first thing you have to find out is probably the most overlooked by starters. We’re talking about the uptime of the server. The uptime directly influences the reliability of your website, because it numbers the percentage of time that the servers are working, and as long as the servers are working, you can be sure that your website is accessible. Many webhosts advertise 99% uptime, and that is “great”, because this means your site will be up 99% of the time, but don’t be fooled: 99% is on the low side, because it represents a loss of four days in a year. Try looking for webhosts that have %99.5 and up to ensure the best reliability.
The other thing you should be looking for is the available bandwidth. It determines how many times your site can be viewed, so the larger your bandwidth, larger the amount of traffic you can get. Choose wisely, thinking about the size of one page of your site. Let’s say each page is 1 MB (which is very large, by the way) and your host allows you to have a bandwidth of 100 GB. This means that a page can be loaded a total of 1000 times. It is a big number, but it is actually low: if your website has, for example, five pages, and each user loads on average 3, this means you can only admit around 330 users per month. Remember to keep in mind the size of your websites and/or files that will be loaded when you have to choose a host in terms of bandwidth.
Something else you have to look out for is the download speed, which determines how fast your website loads. If you keep a small enough size, this shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Larger websites however do require larger download speeds to load within an acceptable period of time.
Then you might want to look at storage space and overall features. It’s like your hard drive. If you’re just hosting a normal, light website, 100 MB should be more than enough, but, if you’re hosting large files, you should aim for something bigger that fits your needs. As for overall features, it’s really a matter of personal choice, because it is up to you to determine what you need. If you were planning on installing an application or CMS like Joomla, or Wordpress, find out the minimum requirements, and then look for a webhost that fits your needs.
If you keep note of these recommendations, you should be able to ease the process of choosing a webhost. Just remember to look out for features and reliability and you should be fine. Good luck on your search!