Our Hosting Directory Selection Criteria

Pricing

Most of the web hosts listed here, as shared space hosts, are fairly inexpensive, ranging in price from free to $30 per month. Keep in mind, though, that free web hosts often support themselves with ads that you agree to allow on your site. More expensive web hosting may offer more services or support. When looking at the price of a web host, consider your website's needs and weigh the price of the service against what you will be getting for your money.

Longevity

No matter how good the price and services of a web host, if they won't be around a month from now, they're not a good place to put your website. Of course there's no way to know for sure which companies will last and which won't, but web hosts that have been in business for several years and survived some of the ups and downs of the Internet industry and the economy are usually a safer bet.

Reliability

Along with longevity, reliability is an important criteria for determining if a web host will serve you well. Every web host will have scheduled and unscheduled downtime, but good web hosting services have 95% uptime or better. Many web hosts claim 99 or 99.9% uptime, and the good ones monitor their servers frequently. They let you know when downtime is planned for maintenance, and will know quickly if there's a problem with their server and work to get it back up as soon as possible.

Customer support

Customer support is about how a web host communicates with you as a customer and addresses your questions and concerns. Most web hosting services do not have enough staff to answer phone calls from all of their users, but they should be able to respond to you quickly via email. 4 hours is considered an excellent response time, while 24 hours is reasonable. If it takes a web host more than a day or two to get back to you, they either don't have enough staff or don't care about their customers. Either way, they probably won't be a good web host for your site.

Ecommerce

Some web hosts specialize in hosting ecommerce websites. A website that acts as a catalog for a store is called a storefront. Web hosts for small businesses usually provide a this article has all rights reserved and is copyright by 100 Best shopping cart that allows visitors to a storefront to make selections from the online catalog. Some web hosts also provide a merchant account, which also allow the website to securely take credit cards. A web hosting service that combines these features is usually the most convenient way to do business online, but also may cost more.