The Best Web Hosting List

So you think you’re ready to buy web hosting? That’s great! Like the first time I purchased web hosting, you must be very excited! It’s a little bit scary, a little thrilling, and a great deal nerve-wracking. To help ease your web hosting anxiety, here are some presales questions you may want to answer yourself before you buy from the best web hosting provider of your choice.

What kind of website do I want to host?

Are you ready for business hosting? Ecommerce? Personal? Family? Narrow it down as much as possible to a specific niche. Here are some further examples:

* Blog hosting / WordPress web hosting
* Joomla hosting
* Web 2.0 hosting
* Dedicated Server Hosting
* Adult hosting
* Music hosting
* Email hosting
* Reseller hosting
* Photo hosting / Artist hosting
* Church hosting

What kind of features do I need?

Consider the kind of website you are looking to create. If you are starting a church website, odds are you are not going to need very much storage space, whereas you might need a website template and an average amount of bandwidth. On the other hand, if you are running a photography website, you are going to need a good deal of storage space and bandwidth, but may be less concerned with website templates or the amount of email addresses you can use.

How many webpages and/or websites will I create?

You may not know this ahead of time, but think in generic terms – do you plan to add other websites to your hosting account in the future? Would you like to be able to have that option?

Do I need advanced web hosting features?

Do you plan to add scripting or programming to your website? If so, make sure the kind of scripts you want to run are supported by your web hosting provider. If you’re unsure, odds are you don’t need them.

Can I build the website myself?

If yes, don’t choose a web hosting provider who offers free site building tools over one that doesn’t just because it looks like they offer more. If you’re unsure about building your own website, make sure that you put a website builder as a priority on your web hosting checklist! Or get a web design template.

We have already explained some basic web hosting terms in detail, but it’s time to get to the nitty-gritty web hosting terms that come up literally everywhere you look! This ought to make it easier to choose the best web hosting provider for your business or personal website.

Control Panel – This is what you use to manage all aspects of your website. For example, you will login to your control panel to update your website, install a blog like WordPress, or to create an email address.

Database – You will likely never use them (either consciously or unconsciously) but databases are places you can store things like product or customers lists, scripts, or where automatic installations install important features. For example, when installing Joomla, your web hosting control panel will install modules into databases. You don’t need to know this, but it helps make Joomla function.

Domain – Your website URL that you want visitors to type in to visit your website. For example, thebestwebhostinglist.com is our domain name here. Normally, you can get this registered for free with your web host.

FTP – FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, and though it sounds technical it’s as easy to setup as downloading a file from your email! FTP Programs help you upload and download files, music, and videos from your webhosting account to your PC or vice versa.

GB – (gigabyte) Honestly, you don’t need to know what a ‘gigabyte’ is to enjoy your webhosting account and website. But a gigabyte (or GB) is a measuring increment. 1 GB is worth 100 MB (megabytes). Make sure you choose a web host who offers more than 5GB of storage space and more than 100GB of bandwidth. That’s all you’ll really need.

Money-Back Guarantee – Pretty self-explanatory, this is something every web host should offer. It’s a guarantee that, if you dislike their services, you can get a refund within a specified period of time. Most MBGs are 30, 60, or 90 days.

Subdomain – Yep, there are levels for domains. For example, thebestwebhostinglist.com is our primary domain. But ix-web-hosting-review.thebestwebhostinglist.com is our subdomain, devoted to explaining everything there is to know about IX Web Hosting. Using subdomains can help you build a new website without purchasing an entirely new domain name for it.

So, you’ve decided that your current web hosting provider just doesn’t cut it? Fly by night web hosting companies are all too common these days, which is part of the reason we created our Top 10 Web Hosting List, to guide you towards the best web hosting companies in the world. If you’re ready to move to new webhosting provider, we can help – here’s the best how to guide for moving from one web host to another.

Step 1: Purchase the Best Web Hosting

Take a look at our Top 10 Web Hosting List and choose the webhost that best suits your needs. We currently recommend IX Web Hosting, our most affordable and powerful web hosting company. Purchase a new account with IX Web Hosting for the best deal possible.

Step 2: Copy, Paste, & Upload

Copy all of your data (text content, videos, music, pictures, links, etc) from your old web hosting provider. DO NOT cancel your service with the old provider until you have done this or you will lose this information forever! You’ll need to upload the content using an FTP program or by logging in with your new host’s control panel. Once you have downloaded and copied and stored all your old information that you want to keep (including emails!), proceed to step 3.

Step 3: Verify & Review

Once all your content is uploaded, use a temporary URL (provided by your new web host) to view your website. If everything looks good, proceed to step 4.

Step 4: Change Your Domain NameServers

This is the part most people forget about or just don’t know they need to do, so pay close attention or your website will never be viewable online! You’ll need to find out who your domain name is registered with. Visit betterwhois.com and type in your domain name. Find where it states “domain registrar” and look up that company online – they are your domain registrar.

You may need to email this domain registrar to gain access to manage your domain name. You’ll need to ask them for your domain name username and password so you can change your nameservers. Or, you can always call your old web host to find this information.

Either way, just login and edit your nameservers (which look like NS1.yourwebhost.com and NS2.yourwebhost.com) to the new nameservers your new web host gives you. Your new webhost can give these to you over the phone as well, so if you lose them, no worries. Once you have updated the domain name servers, your domain name will propagate, which means it won’t be viewable as an online website for around 24 hours.

Step 5: Preview and Cancel

Preview your new website and make sure you have everything you need. Then, cancel your old web hosting account, and you’re set! Your site will be online in no time!

While email is a great thing to have with your hosting service, one thing you’ll need to remember is that so many of the best webhosts out there are offering their services on shared servers. Shared hosting almost always has limitations on the number of emails you’re allowed to send out per hour, so if you’re looking to send out more than, say, 500 or 600, you’ll probably want to look into VPS or Dedicated hosting. The reason webhosts often limit outgoing email on a shared server is to try and reduce the instance of spamming and blacklisting. If a server is black listed because ONE person sent out a few hundred too many emails, than the hundreds of account holders on that server will suffer — and their first course of action will be to call the webhost. So those email restrictions are both for yours AND the hosts benefit.

While email-forwarding can be extremely beneficial to people, there is one catch that beginners should be made aware of, especially if you’re going for one of the shared hosting plans that most of the best web hosts offer. Time and time again during my time with a web hosting company, we found that people were actually spamming themselves and blacklisting their OWN servers due to email forwarding!

Here’s how it works: The big guys — Yahoo!, AOL, Hotmail, Gmail — really, REALLY hate spam, and they’re quick to blacklist any server that they think a spammer is on. If you prefer to use your Yahoo account, for example, but want your customers to email an address that’s @yourdomain.com you might set up a forwarder — your customers see the professional email address, but you can maintain your email as you always have in your Yahoo inbox. Just remember, that ALL your email will be forwarded — including the spam. What often happens is, once the spam hits your Yahoo email, you might mark it as spam. What does Yahoo see? Yahoo sees the spam as being sent from your OWN hosting account — from the server your website is on! Keep on marking that spam, and Yahoo just might blacklist your server. In essence — you’re spamming yourself.

So if you do decide to set up forwarders, always just delete any spam that comes in from your hosting account. Better to be safe that sorry!

You’ve got the best web hosting. You’ve registered your domain name. You have even created email addresses, learned how to use the web host’s control panel, and have set up your first blog!

But what makes your website work? What makes it look good? What makes it do the things you need it to do?

In fact you’re wondering, how do I make my website work?

1) The first step is great web hosting. Choosing the best webhosting provider can be difficult, so take a look at our Top 10 Web Hosts for suggestions.

2) Find great website design. If you are working with WordPress Web Hosting, try finding free WordPress Themes. If you are working with a basic website, you’ll want to get reliable web design templates.

3) Learn scripting or hire a professional. If you want your website to do things, automate certain processes, or otherwise interact with your customers or audience, you’re going to need to learn coding like PHP and MySQL. There are many resources online to hire professionals also to help you out.

If you call or contact some of the best web hosts, you might come across the term “blacklisting”. Basically, blacklisting happens when an email service thinks they are getting spammed by a certain server — they “blacklist” that server and block an incoming email from that server.

I’ll spell it out in examples and explain , since I quite like examples

You’re on a shared server with 300 other customers. One of those customers has a large mailing list and many Yahoo! accounts. He send out email and a number of the Yahoo! customers don’t remember signing up for the list, so they mark his email as spam. Yahoo takes the spam claims seriously, looks into the matter, and finds that these emails were sent by on account holder on a specific server. They then blacklist that server, disallowing all incoming emails from that server. How this affects you if you’re on that server is, you can email hotmail accounts, you can email AOL accounts, but any Yahoo accounts you try to email won’t go through. In these cases, the webhosts are alerted to the problem, investigate the alleged “spammer” on their server, and work with Yahoo to get them white listed again.

Because this is ALWAYS a risk with any shared hosting, companies who rely heavily on email communications might choose to go with a VPS or Dedicated server to lessen and eradicate this possibility.

Many of the best webhosts offer email along with their basic hosting packages. This is a really helpful addition and can add to a far more professional web presence. With these hosts, you can create multiple emails, all containing your domain. For example, if you have a website, dogs.com, you can create email address for multiple aspects of your website, so that your customers will always reach the right people for the right response. You could create info@dogs.com, support@dogs.com, feedback@dogs.com… This can be a great way to organize all the emails you might receive – especially if your site is popular! You could always keep any existing personal aol, hotmail, or yahoo email accounts you might have (you could even set up email forwarders), but to your customers, an email tied in to your domain will make you seem more organized, trustworthy, and established.

Many of the best webhosts offer free email auto-replies with their hosting services. An auto reply is a great way to make sure your contacts never feel forgotten — even when you’re on vacation in the Bahamas Simply put, auto-replies are saved responses that are sent out whenever someone sends an email to a certain address. For example, say your primary email address is info@domain.com, and you’ll be away from your email for a few weeks. Despite being away, you want to make sure that any customers or contacts that email you know they aren’t being ignored. You can set up an auto-reply for info@, telling your contacts that you’re away, when you will return, or even direct them to a better way to contact you.

Some people never use them, but if you have some kind of online business, auto-replies might be an invaluable resource.

Have you ever emailed a professional organization or business, only to see them reply via a Gmail, Yahoo!, or Hotmail account? If so, you probably wondered how they were able to do this. They are able to reply from a different email address because they have enabled email forwarding, an incredibly useful tool for your web hosting account.

Email forwarding is kind of similar to regular postal mail forwarding when you change your address or use a PO Box, etc. You have your mail sent to a new place, where you can respond at ease.

Email forwarding works exactly the same way, except you can continuously forward email from one account to another. This is extremely helpful if you access your Gmail account more often than your web hosting account.

For example, let’s say you have sales@yourname.com. This is the email address you have on your business  cards, business web hosting contact page, and the email associated with all sales requests for your business. But you really don’t like logging into your web hosting webmail, because it’s not as familiar to you as your Gmal account. But in Gmail, you have buffy001@gmail.com, which is not a professional email you feel comfortable giving out to potential or current clients.

So you can forward sales@yourname.com to buffy001@gmail.com using email forwarding! That way, you can read and even respond (if you choose to) from the comfort of your Gmail account, even though all your clients are emailing your professional Sales email, provided by your website host.

The Best Web Hosting companies normally provide unlimited email forwarding, which means you can forward to any address you’d like. You can even forward multiple addresses – for example, sales@ might go to buffy001, but support@ goes to another employee of yours over at batman007@yahoo.com. The possibilities here are truly endless.