subject: Selecting The Best Website Host [print this page] Selecting The Best Website Host Selecting The Best Website Host
There is no single best website host, it depends on what you want to achieve.
If you want to simply set-up a personal website or blog you may find that you would be perfectly happy using Wordpress.com or Squidoo for free. If you want to be fully in control a low cost shared hosting service will deliver what you need.
If you want a website for business purposes then you want to find a host that offers everything you need and provides excellent support. The services you should look for will depend on the software and databases you need and also what you intend to do (will you be selling products or services from the site?). You may well find shared hosting to be fine, at least initially, but if you will be selling and collecting customer data you should consider VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting.
In either case your best website host should:
* Offer a reasonable volume of storage and bandwidth. "Unlimited" is often quoted but this is meaningless and you should study the small print to see what restrictions there are.
* Offer a speedy and stable service. Your pages should display fast and downtime should be a rare occurrence. An uptime guarantee of upwards of 99.9% should be sought.
* Offer excellent help and support. I consider the standard of support to be of prime importance and would certainly recommend that you put it ahead of price as a criteria for choosing a supplier.
Personal users will find that their best website host is a Linux based service (unless there is a specific reason to go for Windows).
For business users finding the best website host may take a bit more work. If you are using 3rd party developers do consult them, as well as Linux Vs Windows they may have some other software or database requirements that need to be met.
If you are setting up an eCommerce site you will also need to consider your shopping cart requirements and match these to the offerings of website hosts.
By following the links beneath this article you can get more information on the matters raised above.
