How to pick a web hosting company is something we run into quite a bit. I suppose it only makes sense as we are a web development studio. This question can get answered in a few different ways. For this post, I’m going to use the average small business website as my example.

Step 1: Figure out what you’re going to do with your site

All too often, first timers pick their web host by cost. They find some company that offers hosting and a bag of cookies for $2.00/mo and immediately sign up. This is by far not the best idea. It’s much easier to sign up on a good web host then move your hosting from one host to another in the future. The first thing anyone should do is decide what they’re going to put on their site. Maybe a blog? Or perhaps it’s just a 3 or 4 page site advertising your new plumbing service. You might even be thinking something more advanced like an online forum to discuss healthy foods and medicines. Any of these 3 simple website have a wide range of technologies and services needed from the web hosting company. After you’ve figured out what you’re going to do with your site, go to Google and search for a host that supports what you want. So lets just say you’re going to run a small business website on Wordpress. Go to Google and search for “Wordpress hosting.” Start looking through some of the hosts. So thats it for Step 1. Decide what you’re going to do with your site.

Step 2: Find a company with a good reputation

So far we’ve already decided we’re going to build a small business website using Wordpress. We’ve searched Google and found over 1,000,000 results on Wordpress hosting. The next thing would be to see who Wordpress recommends. It just so happens that Wordpress happily recommends hosting companies that run Wordpress at an optimal level. (Wordpress Hosting Page) Your next step might be going to Google and searching for reviews on the top hosts from that page. A search might be something like “MediaTemple hosting review.” You’ll see a very wide variety of results. Pick a few and just start reading to get a general feeling about the company.

Step 3: Looking for the right features

Another question we see quite often is “should I use Windows or Linux hosting?” We usually answer that with Linux. But here’s why. Linux tends to have a LOT more opensource and free applications built for it. Some examples of this are Joomla, Wordpress, Drupal and so on. While you may still need to hire someone like 26AM to do development work for you, you can save a lot in not having to actually pay for the software. Windows however may be what you need if you’re interfacing with some special Windows database in your network. More often than not, Linux will serve you well. The next items to look at are below:

• Storage/Harddrive Space – How much space do you need? Are you posting a bunch of videos? Look for no less than 10GB of space.
• Email – How many email addresses do you need? Most hosting companies offer more than enough email accounts.
• FTP Access – Be sure your hosting company lets you use FTP, this is the most common way of moving files from your computer to the server
• SSH Access – If you’re working with a development company like 26AM, you’ll make your developers life many times easier with SSH.
• MYSQL (Database) – You will almost always need MYSQL if your website contains any dynamic components
• PHP or Ruby on Rails – Two technologies that are needed to run almost all modern websites.

Step 4: Cost and Value

Cost is not our main concern when picking a hosting company. We’ve gone that route before and have found ourselves very dissatisfied. While the hosting companies we used did in fact meet the above criteria, they were frequently down for maintenance or had terrible customer support. It’s important to find a hosting company that will hold your hand through out the hosting process. They should be available into the evening hours for support, they should offer telephone and email support and they should have an uptime guarantee. The cheapest hosts are often NOT the best hosts. Do you really think if you’re paying $2.00/mo that Company X is going to make you a priority?

Step 5: Some companies we like but don’t necessarily use:

• Rackspace
• Slicehost
• MediaTemple
• Joyent

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 at 1:43 pm and is filed under Just for Fun. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.