Web hosting services: what to look for and what to avoid

Searching through thousands of web hosting companies and web hosting services that fits your personal or business web hosting requirements is often too time consuming. So, we've developed a comprehensive resource of information and tools including a selection of in-depth guides, hosting industry articles, user reviews on different web hosting services. We took into consideration your web hosting services requirements when publishing our independent reviews, so, be sure to find the best company for your web hosting needs!

Finding a web hosting company is easy, but finding the reliable web hosting company is difficult. All web hosting companies range in size and the services they offer. Finding a trustworthy web hosting company, however, is not as easy as it looks. Too many hosting companies lie on what they offer with no intention of delivering on what they promise, selling you a "clunker" that doesn't work as promised, overcharge you and ignore your messages when you e-mail or call trying to resolve a problem concerned with their web hosting services.

Choose a Reliable Web Hosting Company

Reliability and speed of access: Not only should the web hosting be reliable and fast, it should guarantee its uptime (the time when it is functional). Look for a minimum uptime of 99%. In fact, even 99% is actually too low - it really should be 99.5% or higher. The web hosting company should provide some sort of refund (prorated refund or discount) if it falls below that figure.

Data Transfer (Traffic/Bandwidth): Data transfer (sometimes referred to as "traffic" or "bandwidth") is the amount of bytes transferred from your site to visitors when they browse your site. Don't believe any commercial web hosting company that advertises "unlimited bandwidth". The host has to pay for the bandwidth and if you consume a lot of it, they will not silently bear your costs. Many high bandwidth websites have found this out the hard way when they suddenly receive the huge bill for having "exceeded" the "unlimited bandwidth". Always look for details on how much traffic the package allows. We recommend you to stay away from any web hosting company that advertises "unlimited transfer", even if the exact amount is specified somewhere else (sometimes buried in their policy statements). Usually you will find that web hosting companies redefine "unlimited" to be limited in some way.

Disk space: For the same reason as bandwidth, watch out also for those "unlimited disk space" schemes. Most sites need less than 50MB of web space, so even if you choose web hosting company that tempts you with 1000MB or 2000MB (or "unlimited space"), be aware that you are unlikely to use that space, so don't let the 500MB space be a big factor in your consideration when comparing with other web hosting companies and web hosting services.

Technical support: Does its technical support function 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (often abbreviated 24/7), all year around? Do not accept web hosting company that does not have staff working on weekends or public holidays. You will be surprised how often things go wrong at the most inconvenient time. Just because web hosting company advertises that it has 24/7 support does not necessarily mean that it really has that kind of support. Test them out!

Many individuals and small businesses take advantage from reliable web hosting services as they wish to expand their online business. Individuals and companies, who outsource their web presence, do so in order to reduce and control operating costs, improve their own company focus, gain access to in-depth expertise, make big profits online with the establishing an online presence by the means of their website: they can get in touch with much more customers than ever before as they have already found the reliable web hosting company! Don't loose your chance to find the reliable web hosting services using web hosting reviews by Rate My Host - feel free to get acquainted with impartial web hosting reviews and ratings of web hosting companies.

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