The Best Web Hosting List

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.

As many of the best webhosts offer their services within shared hosting environments, it’s important to be aware of CPU usage and how it might affect you. Although many hosts are now offering “unlimited bandwidth” there is a bit of a catch to it — you can use as much bandwidth at you need, but if you’re using too much of the CPU, you’ll need upgrade to a dedicated or VPS server.

Many webhosts limit CPU usage to less than 1% on a shared server, and the logic behind this is simple. Say you have 100% of the CPU available on a server, and 300 people are on that server, that leaves less that 1% available to each person so the computer can run smoothly. That doesn’t necessarily mean each person IS using their portion — some customers may have a very small site that demands little or no CPU, some may not have a site yet at all — but it means that if your site is consistently busy and your users are doing CPU-intensive actions, you’ll become a burden to the server, everyone else’s site will slow down, and you’ll have to upgrade.

Most people with small sites won’t ever have to worry about it but, let’s put it this way, just because a shared server says it offers “unlimited bandwidth” doesn’t mean a site like Facebook or Livejournal or Pogo can survive on it — they’re way too popular and will need much more than what a shared server can offer.

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.

Along with shared and dedicated hosting, a few hosts also offer VPS hosting. Simply put, VPS hosting is a step between shared and dedicated. Instead of going really cheap and sharing a server with a few hundred people, or going really expensive and purchasing your own server, you can look for a Virtual Private Server, in which you would be sharing the server with a couple dozen other people. The server is partitioned with a specific software so that each client on the server receives an equal share of the server, and each client can see and deal with the server as though s/he was the only one on it. This is a good option if you have a large amount of outgoing email or a website that’s taking up more than the allowed CPU usage in the shared environment, but not enough to warrant the price of a dedicated server. Another reason for looking into a VPS is if you need root/shell access. Some of the best web hosts do not allow root access on their shared server as a security measure, so a VPS would be a good option.

VPS hosting can range from $20 to $80, depending on the company, the type of server, and the specs. Be sure to check out our growing list of hosts that offer VPS services!

The first thing you should know about web hosting providers is that they want you to be their customer. Their number one priority is making the customer happy, because the best web hosting is about customer satisfaction. Offering you cheap web hosting is one way to accomplish getting your business. The other way is offering a ton of storage space and web hosting bandwidth.So how much storage and bandwidth do you really need?The answer actually varies. But you will likely fall into one of the two following categories:* New WebmastersIf you have never bought web hosting, just need a simple website, or are running a small website, you really will only need 10GB or less of web hosting storage space. Don’t be fooled by the large amounts of storage space even the best web hosting offers – they are simply marketing terms to get you to buy.* Web Hosting GurusIf you operate a large web hosting site, are planning to run dedicated server hosting, or have an audience who download regularly from your website or view the website quite a bit every day, hour, or month, you are going to want to pay more attention to web hosting storage and will likely even need to look into VPS web hosting or even dedicated server hosting, both of which are more expensive web hosting types.

When setting up your website, you are going to be faced with various types of web hosting offers. There are literally dozens to choose from, depending on which web hosting provider you are looking at. However, there are some basic types of web hosting that you will see within every provider’s offerings, so here they are with some explanations of these often confusing web hosting terms. Remember, the best web hosting in the world will help you understand these terms as well, so be sure to ask your web hosting provider for more information.

Shared Web Hosting: This is the most common type of web hosting. Shared web hosting merely means you are sharing the server with 200-700 other websites, so your resources (bandwidth, storage, CPU, etc) are limited.

VPS (Virtual Private Server) Hosting: This can also be called semi dedicated web hosting, and more or less offers you a bigger piece of the server’s pie. You only share resources with 20 or so other websites and you get SSH, Shell, and Root access as well as better RAM and processor.

Dedicated Web Hosting: This is the biggest step you can take in your web hosting journey. The best web hosting providers will offer dedicated server hosting to you if you need it, but it’s the most expensive type of web hosting available, simply because it becomes your very own server, where you can do anything!

The best web hosting aims to provide you with more information on types of web hosting available, but be sure to also research these different options carefully.