Opening a new web hosting account is easy. The hard part is choosing which web hosting company to use. There are so many companies and accounts/plans to choose from, it’s mind-boggling.
Before we go further, you should know the basic types of accounts that available with each web hosting company. They are:
- Shared Hosting – Recommended for new, small to mid-sized websites with low to mid amount of traffic. Under this account, a number of different account holders share one server to run all of their websites. For this reason, it is called a Shared account, and there are times when the server can get overloaded due to high traffic or over-usage of resources. Most affordable.
- VPS Hosting – Also known as a Virtual Private Server, the web hosting company allocates a certain portion of the server hard drive to be used privately by the account holder. This is a step up from a Shared account – offering more reliability and privacy.
- Dedicated Servers – Recommended for high-traffic websites that use a lot of resources such as disk space and bandwidth. Most expensive, but also most reliable.
- Reseller Hosting – This type of account is designed for webmasters who want to resell the web hosting service to a 3rd party. A certain portion of hard drive and bandwidth is allocated to the Reseller account.
And, under each type of web hosting account, there are also different pricing plans.
When I choose a web hosting company, there are 4 key criterias that I look at. They are:
- Solid customer support,
- Fast reliable servers,
- Features, and…
- Cost.
As for the other criterias, you can overlook them. For example, you should not choose a company solely based on the size. A large company may have lots of money, but it doesn’t necessarily translate to better service. Remember, they have more employees and higher overhead costs than the smaller competitors.
Another criteria you can overlook are the ultra-cheap “unlimited” plans. While it sounds like a great value for your money, plans that offer unlimited bandwidth and disk space for cheap, sometimes translates to overloaded servers. Overloaded servers usually mean slower loading times and more frequent down-times for your website.
Cheaper isn’t always better. You might save money, but if the service or support isn’t there, then it’s not worth it. What good is a website, if it’s down half the time? You’d be losing money every minute your site is offline. In my opinion, it is better to spend a little more money to get quality reliable service.
Last but not least, you need to pay attention to the features that the web hosting company provides. This is because there are certain minimum requirements necessary to run a website software.
Here’s a sample set of requirements to run WordPress:
- PHP version 5.2.4 or greater
- MySQL version 5.0 or greater
Each software has its own set of requirements, so you need to check with the software developer to get that information.
Over the years, I have had experiences with many different web hosting companies. Some were bad, some were average, and a few were good.
I recommend these web hosting companies:
Since this is your first website, you should be OK with a basic Shared account plan. After you’ve gained some experience with your first website and hosting account, you can upgrade or change the plan as you see fit.
Note 1: It is not necessary to register your domain name and web hosting account with the same company. This is entirely up to you.
Note 2: Some premium software providers offer web hosting as part of their monthly package plan. So, if you choose to go with a premium software provider that offers web hosting as part of their plan, then you do not need to open your own web hosting account.