When you are shopping online for the best web hosting providers, you’ll find a lot of web hosting rebate and hosting coupons type sites. These websites are often affiliated directly with the hosting companies, because the web hosts will pay their affiliates to advertise and offer incentives for their products.

To take advantage of web hosting rebates, you must first find a quality hosting rebates website. For example, try FreeWebHostingDeals.com, which is the best hosting rebate site you’ll find because they offer 100% rebates, which means you get your web hosting for free.

The second step requires following the instructions on the web hosting rebater’s website. For example, on FreeWebHostingDeals.com, you must click through their unique hosting rebate URL prior to purchasing.

Next, you’ll purchase the hosting plan in full upfront.

Finally, you’ll fill out the web hosting rebate form, and you can expect your full rebate in the mail in less than 2 months!

I have personally worked with many of these web hosting rebate sites, and have to say that FreeWebHostingDeals.com is the most professional and unique offer I have ever seen. Check them out and take advantage of their 100% rebate before it’s too late.

Asking the right questions is essential to getting the right answers, so the more you know ahead of time will influence the kinds of questions you are able to ask and the best web hosting answers you’ll receive in turn!

So here are the top 5 most important web hosting questions to ensure you choose the best web hosting provider.

Q. How many years has your web hosting company been in business?

Why This is Important: If they say “10 years”, you know you’re in good hands! If they say “5 months”, better put your money elsewhere. The good news is that all of our recommended web hosting providers have been in business more than 2 years and many of them have been around for more than ten, which helps you ensure you have quality web hosting.

Q. How easy is it to upgrade or downgrade my service? Can I do this even after I’ve hosted with you past the 30 day money back guarantee period? How much will it cost?

Why This Matters: Imagine that your ecommerce web business escalates so fast that you need to accommodate with a VPS or dedicated server. Wouldn’t that be great? Not if your web hosting provider doesn’t support VPS or dedicated servers! Make sure 1) if you plan to grow that your web host can accommodate, 2) that you can do so at any time, and 3) that it doesn’t cost a fortune to do so. All of the recommended web hosts here will provide easy upgrades and affordable hosting solutions.

Q. How often do you perform website backups, how long do you keep them, and how much does it cost to retrieve these backups?

Why This Matters: I’m sure you can guess, but if your website is hacked or a server goes down, what happens to your website? Do they ensure a copy somewhere for you? If so, how long will that copy be available to you and how much will it cost to have it sent to you? Knowing this will allow you to plan out website backup strategies or hire someone to keep daily backups.

Q. What are your technical support hours of operation?

Why This Matters: If you need help at 1am, can you send an email and actually get a response or give them a call? Problems happen, so make sure your web host can be accountable for any technical issues that arise.

Q. Do you offer a web hosting money back guarantee or uptime guarantee?

Why This Matters: If you don’t like the hosting plan or if your website is down for more than a couple hours every year, you need to know what your web hosting provider can do to compensate for your loss.

The best web hosting companies will offer what is called an “uptime guarantee”. More often than not, you will see this uptime guarantee listed in a percentage – for example, 99.9% or 99.99%, etc. There are a couple matters to consider, however, to understand exactly what each web host means by ‘uptime guarantee’.

1. Various Degrees of Uptime

Yep, 99.9% and 99.99% are very different! Though the numbers may appear similar in length, web hosting is a precise science. Here is a quick list of the most popular web hosting uptime guarantees to show what they translate to in actual downtime:

99.5% = up to 216 minutes per month of downtime
99.8% = up to 87 minutes per month of downtime
99.9% = up to 44 minutes per month of downtime
99.99% = up to 5 minutes per month of downtime
99.999% = up to 27 seconds per month of downtime

2. Downtime is Calculated Per Month

As you’ll note from the chart above, web hosting downtime is calculated per month. This means that any reliable web hosting provider MUST have at least 99.9% uptime for you to be happy with their services. After all, would you be happy with 3.6 hours of downtime per month? That’s almost 2 days of downtime per year!

3. How Uptime is Measured

The actual uptime of any web hosting provider is measured through every single server they own. So while one server may experience 2 hours of downtime per month, if all of the other servers only experience less than 5 minutes per month of downtime, that web host is ranked as having 99.99% uptime.

4. Compensation

Some of the best web hosting companies will offer to compensate you if they do not meet their uptime guarantee. This is great for you, because many web hosting providers will give you free hosting or discounts on future renewals. Though if it happens too often, no amount of freebies can make up for bad hosting service.

5. What Really Matters

Web Hosting Uptime Guarantees are only numbers measured by various statistics, and odds are, you will likely never notice your web host’s downtime if you choose a reliable web hosting provider from our top 10 web hosting list. Just be wise, knowledgeable, and cautious in your web hosting search and you’re sure to pick the best hosting provider out there!