The web hosting industry has become increasingly competitive and there are a myriad of companies out there battling for your business - but some won’t definitely have you or your business interests in mind. Cheap web site hosting definitely doesn’t mean the best hosting and neither does signing up with the most expensive companies guarantee you the best service - it’s a confusing world of solutions, smoke and mirrors.

Competition’s a great thing, but the frenzied levels of promotion has also forced a number of hosts to use questionable marketing tactics and a heavy load of activity-restricting fine print in their contracts. Many web-hosting companies don’t make profits by establishing a solid customer base, but rather by having a high turnover. The more customers they can have signing up and then dropping off, the more dollars they make.

Of course, not all hosting services take this attitude and there are some solid companies that respect and encourage their clients.

FINDING THE RIGHT HOST

1. Finding these gems amongst the rot is the challenge. Some webmasters have to change hosting services 3 or 4 times a year! The downtime involved prevents them doing what they do best, to maintain and develop their sites.

2. Regardless of how good a hosting service may claim to be or how they represent themselves, the only way you’ll get to understand what they are offering is to ask questions - and then to file the answers for comparison later on. Find out about what others are saying about them too; but bear in mind that if a hosting company has been around for a long time; they won’t have a 100 uptime over a month. )

3. Can I upgrade my plan at any time?
(A good hosting service will allow you to change your plan at any time)

4. What are your excess bandwidth charges?
(Although unlikely you will get excess traffic during start-up phase, it’s important to know how much you will be charged if you use over and above your quota for data transfer. Data transfer or “bandwidth” refers to the amount of data going in and out of your site e.g. publishing up information or requests from visitors for information including page views.)

5. How often will my site be backed up?
(In a number of cases, you’ll find that the cheaper the price, the less likely your site will be backed up on a regular basis)

6. Do you offer secure server and ecommerce capabilities (shopping carts etc.) included or as an upgrade?
(You may not want this in the beginning, but it’s handy to have)

7. Do you offer an affiliate program or referrer bonuses?
(If you settle with a host and you are happy with the service, no doubt you’ll tell others. Why not profit from that - it can subsidize the running of your site or even turn into a good earner for you!)

8. Is your free tech support available 7 days a week?
(A VERY important point - many offer this but sometimes all you’ll get is a recorded or autoresponder message during weekends. Telephone support is not a necessity for most people - a good email or online ticket based support system can actually be better than the phone as it provides a record for both parties. Many helpdesk telephone support people have very little technical knowledge - they tend to rely on “wizards”.)

9. Why should I choose you over other hosts offering the same sorts of features and pricing?

Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions

These questions and points are just to get you started in the reviews process and will allow you to weed out many of the fly-by-nighters. It may seem like a lot to ask, but an experienced staffer should be able to complete the questions very quickly. Always be polite when posing questions as the answers will be provided by a human being with feelings as well. By asking questions in a courteous manner, you will get the relationship off to a good start.

When composing the email, skip a couple of lines between each question to encourage the person responding to put their remarks under the relevant question. This will give you a good record to refer back to in the future. Always respond to each response with a brief thank you note.