With all the companies offering various packages with enormous promises on bandwidth, up time, customer support and other inclusions, choosing a web hosting company will definitely be anything but easy. What with all the jargon and the seeming similarities between web hosts, it takes a knowledgeable customer to really see through the huge words and make informed decisions in picking the best.

This article helps you be that customer and determine the relevance of each company’s offers, thereby helping you choose one that best suits your needs. Listed here are factors to consider along with a few tips and guidelines to work with.

1. Cost offers and packages

There is a difference between cheap and low cost web hosting, and it is the latter that you should be aiming for. Cheap web hosting only promises a lower price, regardless of the quality. Low cost web hosting, on the other hand, allows you to get maximum benefits or excellent quality services for a fair price. The trick is first looking at the company’s services and evaluating them in relation to the cost offer. Some offer web hosting for as low as $1.99 a month, but with very limited services. Here are some factors to consider:

• Quality – For starters, it is safer to look at web hosting companies with longer experience in web hosting. Start with those that have been hosting web sites for at least two years. Search the web for reviews and check out websites that the company is hosting. The company must be competent, dependable and reliable.

• Bandwidth and Storage Space – Having high bandwidth or storage space doesn’t always guarantee that you get the best deal. Choose the appropriate rates based on the kind of website that you intend to put up, the expected volume of traffic, and amount of data you expect to use.

• Customer Service and Technical Support – These must be available 24/7 and must be reliable enough that you can always get prompt and knowledgeable answers to your questions. Some web hosting companies have live chat enabled so you can inquire anytime on top of phone and email support.

• Flexibility – Choose a host and package that allows enough room should you decide to expand your site or online business. 

2. Your type of website

Your web hosting needs will depend hugely on the type of website that you intend to put up. This will help estimate how much traffic you expect to receive or how many files you would need, thus, determining how much disk space, bandwidth or technical support you would require from your host package.

Here some of the basic website types:

1. Blogs – Currently one of the most common, blogs (short for web logs), are online journals where people can also post various media such as photos and videos. These sites allow for comments and discussions under each post.

2. Community Building – Also known as social networking sites, these websites build online communities where people can log in and connect or interact with other users. Examples of which are Facebook and MySpace.

3. E-commerce –Amazon and eBay are two such websites, where people buy and sell products online.

4. Personal – This type is usually used by individuals mainly for non-business purposes. It usually generates less traffic that business websites and requires less storage capacity.

5. Informational – A common example of this is Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia where there are thousands of informative articles on different topics.

6. Catalog / Online Business Brochure – Usually dedicated to a particular business or company, it offers information on products, services and other important facts about website subject.

7. Photo sharing – Examples of this are Flickr, Picasa, Image Shack and Photobucket. There’s a multitude of websites like this, some offering free photo sharing while others offer paid services with better capacity and support.

8. Mobile Device – Websites of this type look narrower and take up less bandwidth, thus, they are more “mobile friendly”.

Bigger websites expecting higher traffic would usually need special hosting services like dedicated hosting, where there is a dedicated server that is concentrated only on a particular website. Others can opt for VPS hosting, which makes use of virtual private servers that, while hosted on the same machine, has partitions that allow full independence from each other as if they were hosted on different machines.

3. Specialty / Area of Focus

When scouting for a good web host, you’d likely find some claiming to have specialties like photo or video hosting, large forums, bandwidth, html, etc. Depending on your needs, you can opt for such specialized hosting services; however, it is still important to make sure that the company doesn’t sacrifice other web hosting essentials. What’s best is to find the perfect balance between all the things that you need from a host.

4. Technical Support

As earlier mentioned in the section on Cost Offers and Packages, good technical support and customer service are among the most important factors to consider in choosing a web hosting company. Good technical support shows expertise and good customer service reflects reliability. They help increase customer satisfaction and lower client stress levels.

5. Reviews and Testimonials

Among the most reliable sources to get feedback from are companies’ users or clients, be it current or former customers. They are the ones who have had experiences with the company and are usually (and supposed to be) unbiased. However, make sure to be careful of “planted” comments or reviews with ulterior motives. Start by checking out testimonials outside the company’s website or searching “(name of web host) sucks” or “(name of web host) reviews” on a search engine. Keep the quotation marks (“”) for better search results like this.

Choosing the web host that’s best for you

While choosing a cheap web hosting service would seem more cost efficient at first, it can eventually have drawbacks if you don’t prioritize your website needs. It can hinder you from maximizing the use of your website and even cause problems and losses, especially if you intend to use your site for business.

 Here are more tips to get you started in choosing a web host:

1. Set a workable budget. Include monthly or yearly allocations and make it a range within which you can adjust.

2. Make a list. Write down your website requirements and make a list of at least 10 companies that best meet them. This will make it easier for you to choose a suitable web host.

3. Read reviews and further narrow down your list.

4. Test the customer service. See how fast they would respond to you, how professional they are and how informative and apt their answers are.

5. Sleep on it. After doing the steps above, you’d likely have an idea on which web host would be best for your site. Sleep on it for a night and if you’re still confident about your choice the next day, then you’ve most likely found your web host. If you’re still doubtful, go through your list again.

This Is A Guest Post By Nikko Marasigan:
Nikko Marasigan is a Marketing Consultant for ServerPoint a web hosting company. They provide VPS hosting and Cloud Hosting for blogs, forums and businesses since 1998. Get him on your Circle now!

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Just learned about a great deal on .COM domains that is only good until August 31. Get a .COM domain for 99 cents, plus the iCANN fees, which means you pay only $1.17, versus the usual cost of .COM's which are around $10, now that's a great deal!

This is from GoDaddy.com , one of my favorite domain registrars, and the coupon code is SCHOOL99. Just choose your domain, and then add the code at checkout, limited to one 99 cent domain per customer, go get yours today!!

UPDATE:
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You can still save $4 on .COM with coupon code FAN3, which makes .COM domains, just $7.49 versus $11.61, not as good as the 99 cent deal, but still a good savings. Just enter the promo code at GoDaddy checkout. That code worked, I just used it.

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In order to launch a website you need to register (purchase) a domain name and get a company to host your website in order for it to be live. A domain is the URL, such as www.yourdomain.com. The .com is termed the extension of a domain and there are several, such as, .info, .net, .biz, .us, .org, .asia etc...

All though there are differing opinions on this topic, in the Internet Marketing world, I prefer .com, because it is the original extension, the most popular and the one most people remember and so it is perfect for branding. Of all the extensions, the .com is one of the most expensive.

Usually, a hosting company will offer you a very cheap domain registration if you buy their hosting, however, I do NOT recommend registering your domain this way. It is best to buy a domain from a registrar separate from your hosting company. There are many horror stories, where people have had problems that tie their hands when they want to transfer hosts and the domain was also registered with that host.

Domain registration with a separate registrar and then completing a quick process of pointing the nameservers to a different host is the better route.

If, Hostgator, is The Best Web Hosting Company, and the king of website hosting, then All Cheap Web is the king of domain registration.  (Coupon Code - wordpress - gets you Hostgator for the 1st month for only 1 Cent)

I have researched over 40 domain registration services and on average, the cost for registering a .com domain is $9.99 per year and an additional $8.99 for private registration, which means that your name, address and other private information is blocked form public view.

Well, with All Cheap Web, .com domain registration is $6.95 and only and additional $1.95 for private registration. Plus, .info domains for $1.99. THAT IS A GREAT DEAL! So register your domains with All Cheap Web and then get hosting services from Host Gator, you won't be sorry!

User friendly and dirt cheap All Cheap Web wins hands down!

What do you guys think? Anyone found any cheaper domain registration?

Even though my blog is new, I think my readers know me well enough to be sure that I do my best to provide quality content and material that is honest, hands-on and usable for all of our Internet Marketing endeavors.

In the same same light, all the banners that you see on my blog and all the products that I mention in my posts, are products I use and can honestly recommend to my readers. By nature, I am no salesperson, in fact I could not sell cheese to a mouse.

I value my reputation, many times in life that is all we truly have. So, even though I am an affiliate for most of these products you can be sure that it is something I use and know by personal experience to be worthwhile.

This brings me to web hosting. Host Gator is the best web hosting company and the ONLY hosting company I use and it is the only hosting I will ever use for 4 main reasons.

1. Since signing up with them over a year ago, there has literally been almost NO downtime, so my site is always available and visitors rarely get an error message when they visit my sites.

2. There is 24/7 Online Chat and phone for customer support and the longest I have ever waited for a support rep to come online was 5 minutes. The support is fantastic and they always hold my hand through any technical issues or questions I have. Other hosting I have used I had to wait sometimes over 45 minutes!!!

3. They are cheap! $9.99 per month for unlimited domains.

4. Brent Oxley. Brent is the founder and owner of Host Gator and Brent is truly unique because he understands customer service and goes out of his way to make sure that his customers are always satisfied. As a customer I always have access to him and can email him with any concerns or problems I may have.

For those of you who don't know, a good web hosting company is so important! There are so many bad ones out there that can really interfere with your online business efforts. And, it is so important to be able to connect with a helpful support rep quickly, because believe me when you are in the middle of a file upload or have any technical issues, nothing is more crucial than having quick and helpful response to your questions.

Uptime, great service and overall host quality is essential to your Internet business efforts and I can honestly tell you that Host Gator is the best, even if the jumping gator maybe be a bit obnoxious, but I think he actually grows on you .

HOSTGATOR COUPON

Go to Host Gator and use COUPON CODE: WORDPRESS and get the first month for 1 Cent, no limitations or conditions, that is ALL you pay upfront!