In this tutorial I’ll explain how to select a shared web hosting provider. This tutorial is not applicable for Dedicated or Managed web hosting providers.

Hardware

The first and foremost requirement should be server hardware. If you are not a geek and have no idea about how to choose hardware then start with the most basic server configuration offered by the web hosting provider. Until n unless you want to host very sophisticated server the basic hardware will be sufficient for most of the requirements.

Web Server

Without any doubt you should be selecting Apache web server.

Control Panel

You will need a cPanel licence to manage server. Don’t choose Plesk as it is sluggish and doesn’t work very well. Most of the shared hosting providers offer cPanel for free so you don’t need to worry about it.

Database

Most of the cPanel based web hosts provide unlimited databases. Some of them restrict number of databases you can have. 1 and 1 offers limited database where as bluehost and hostgator offer unlimited database.

E-mail

Most of them offer unlimited e-mails. This is no brainer as you will not be using hundreds of e-mails.

Support

Don’t opt for any support option. All of existing web host problems are already solved so just search for them on Google and you will find solution.

Following are some of the points which you need to consider before start looking for the best web hosting company.

1) Static Website or Dynamic Website

If you are planning to host a static website and no database is required then you can get any good web hosting services. Most of the web hosts are cheap without databases.

For dynamic websites where you need database choice can be little tricky. If you wish to have only one database then you can get a web host with lowest rate and offering less databases. However if you intend to add more databases then you should purchase more databases in advance as upgrading to get more databases can be costly affair.

2) Bandwidth

Most of the web hosts offer enough bandwidth to take care of your day to day traffic however if you expect more than 10k+ visitors per day then you should think of getting higher bandwidth.

3) Speed

Speed is not an issue in SEO too. Faster websites have advantages over slower websites in Google Search Ranking. Google now considers web site speed also in ranking.

It is also very difficult to find out in advance how fast a web host could be.

The best way to find it out is to read Web hosting reviews as we have provided here to get an initial guess on server speed. Server speed can be ignored for static website with few pages but for dynamic websites or media rich website it would become one of the main decision making factor.

4) Customer Support

There is no such thing a good customer support. All of customer supports, no matter whether they are Web hosting companies or any other companies, will always have issues with some customers and hence you can’t get a balanced opinion on it beforehand.

And the whole purpose of this Web Hosting Reviews website to bring up customer support issues to educate customers.

5) Backup

I had a friend in USA who lost all his data because he was not in habit of backing up data and he relied on Web Hosting provider to do it. He lost all his data when dues to some technical glitch the web hosting company lost all its data. Unfortunately it is very rare that any web hosting company will do any data backup for you.

Read their small print they always mention that they take no responsibilities of data loss dues to any circumstances.

The only exception is when they do databases in server migrations and in which case they might backup data. But to be safe side don’t rely on Web hosting providers for data backup.

6) Cost

With electronics cost coming down, and plenty of memory at offering the overall cost of web hosting has come down drastically. Some of Web Hosting companies even offer web hosting as low as £1.99/month. However remember this fact you get what you pay for. So don’t get fooled by the low/lowest/cheap/cheapest web hosting package advertisement. There is no such thing as free lunch.

7) E-mail

The most important requirement to check for e-mail is if the web host provides SMTP/POP and Web mail access. You must always get SMTP/POP and Web mail access at least.

8) FTP

FTP access is provided by almost all of the web hosting companies. Some of them also offer Web FTP which might come handy in case you are behind firewall and can’t access FTP. However there are free Web FTP websites also from which you can access any FTP.

9) Database Administration

For databases such as mySQL you should also check if a web hosting company offers mySQL access or not. It would be exceptional if any web hosting company doesn’t offer mySQL or any database access. phpMyAdmin is the main applciation used to access mySQL database.

Above are just some of the points which you need to consider before narrowing down on your preferred web hosting company.

Support

Luckily I never had any major issues with their support. On few occasions they have helped me to sort out issues. Once I was setting up WordPress MU blog on Hostgator and needed help in setting up virtual root which they configured for me.

Conclusion

Hostgator is the only web hosting provider which escaped my ranting. Well this is not trye entirely. I’ve tried their so called SEO Hosting and it proved to be total disaster for me. I was perhaps their first customer to use SEO hosting heavily. I’ll rant on it in another review on this site.

Try hostgator for basic html/static website and up to some extent low traffic WordPress or any other php script.