How to choose a web host?

Once you have narrowed your search to several web hosting companies, you will need to find more information about them in order to decide which one you should go with. Take a closer look at the offerings that each company have. For example check each of the web hosting plans they offer and find the hosting plans that will best fit your requirements - space, bandwidth, scripting, email services, etc. If there are any reviews available about these hosts, read them.

The next thing that you should do is to visit each company website. Serious and reliable hosts usually will have nice informative sites with plenty of information and details about the web hosting services they offer. A good site does not necessary mean that the web hosting company is a good one. However it is recommended that you avoid hosts with sites that look like they have been made in 20 minutes, with incomplete information, error messages, etc. We suppose you would not like to deal with people that do not take what they are doing seriously.

Take a look at the hosting company plans pages to see if what they have there is what you are looking for. Check for any discounts and promotions. Check what payment methods they accept - Credit card payments, Paypal, Wired bank transfers, Checks, etc.

If you have any questions, it is always a good idea to contact the webhost. Send them an email and ask all the "pre-sales questions" you need answers for. In this way you will be able to receive more detailed information about their web hosting services as well as you will be able to check how fast the webhost support is reacting to customer inquiries. Well, some companies have different priorities for pre-sales questions, so receiving good and speedy replies on your presales question does not mean that the support requests you might have will be treated the same way. These days a lot of web hosting companies have "Live chat" available on their sites. Yes, that's right you can discuss what you are interested in right on the host site - on-line. No, email and whatever. Sometimes it is fun to chat with such sales rep on-line. However we will recommend email correspondence. It will give you chance to keep the host answers for future reference. You may wish to check our "What questions to ask?" article for sample presales questions.