Top Website Hosting - Key Criteria

A top website hosting service is essential for any business moving on to the web. By using a well established and reliable provider you should have few problems and will be able to offer a good service to your customers through your website always being available and loading quickly.  Google are now taking loading speed into account when generating their search results so if you will be aiming for a good search engine ranking, top website hosting is even more important.Forget about free hosting, you will have to pay for the standard of service you will need.  There are plenty of website hosting providers which can provide the level of service required and a web search will find several sites which list the top suppliers.   However, this can still be confusing because there is no consistency about which providers are considered best and reviews usually empathize certain features of each package making a detailed comparison difficult.Before looking at any potential hosting providers it is essential to have worked out what you want:  Linux or Microsoft Hosting:- If you are having a site built for you the developers will advise you on the hosting requirements.  If your site requires a Microsoft environment then you must get a Microsoft hosting package.  On the other hand, if you are building your own site you should go for a Linux package.Level of Service:- This starts with space on a shared server and goes up to having your own dedicated server, the higher the level of service (and the more you pay) the less competition there is for resources (e.g. bandwidth).  If you are starting a new site a basic shared package will be fine.  This just means that multiple users are hosted on the same server and share all the resources. Reliability and Speed:- A site that is not available is a sure way to lose customers and a site that loads slowly will result in frustration for your customers.  Look for a guarantee of uptime of at least 99.9% and also search for recent user comments on potential hosting providers.   Customer Support:- This might be overlooked at the outset but it will become very important if problems arise.  Look for 24/7 support preferably with a toll free phone number in addition to email.Bandwidth and Disk Space:- You will see that unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth is now commonly advertised.   Clearly this is just marketing as it is impossible for these things to really be unlimited and you may well find that the terms and conditions do include some sort of limitation.  However, bandwidth and disk space are unlikely to be an issue in the short term, and may never become so, unless your site grows dramatically.    Number of Domains and Databases:- The basic sharing packages of many hosting providers limit these.  This is not a problem if you are only interested in having one site as you can always upgrade later if necessary.Cost:- You might think it odd to put cost last but the price differences between the top website hosting providers are small enough to make the above factors more important.    It is worth noting that whilst all hosting providers advertise a monthly cost, only a few actually let you pay monthly. Most require payment a number of months in advance.