How to Choose The Best Domain Hosting Provider

Choosing the best domain host can seem a little daunting at first, particularly if you've never tried to find one before. Thankfully, it's not actually as hard as you might imagine - you just need to know what to look for.

  • The cheapest plan almost certainly isn't the best one, and it's almost always a mistake to pick your host based purely on price. Rather than looking around till you find the bargain basement option, decide which features you're going to need and then pick the cheapest that has them all and looks like it will deliver them properly - it's the only way to be sure.
  • Needless to say, there's also no indication that a particular host is better than any other simply in the fact that they are popular. Take the recommendations of people you know and trust into account, but don't be swayed from what you know you need for your own site.
  • There is no such thing as unlimited bandwidth or disk space. Bandwidth is limited by the physical size of the cable running into the machine, and disk space is limited by the memory board of the hard drive inside the server. When web hosting companies say that they're offering you "unlimited" something, what they actually mean is "more than you're likely to use" - and you'll pay through the nose for it, as well as suffering for it through annoying restrictions. An unlimited-bandwidth server might not allow you to host video, for example, because that uses more bandwidth than most other applications and therefore might reveal them to you in their lie by reaching the limit and causing your website to fall over suddenly.
  • Did you know that you can have more than one URL for the same site? With a little work www.awesomesite.com, www.awesomesite.net and www.awesomesite.org can all point to the same place - along with any others you buy - meaning that nobody needs to remember your address completely exactly, and nobody can intentionally buy up your site's name in other domains to 'squat' them. You want to pick a web hosting provider who will allow you to buy more than one domain and point them all at the same site without too much trouble, as well as one who will allow you to build more than one site should you wish so to do.
  • As with so many things, in the world of web hosting good customer service is paramount. Make sure you read a few reviews before you make a decision, if you want to be sure.

There's plenty to bear in mind and to think about, but assuming you've put some effort into deciding what you need you'll be able to find a web host that's right for you.