How to Judge a Web Host Before You Sign Up
How do you tell a good web hosting service from a bad one? What features should you actually be looking for when picking a host? What is bandwidth, or transfer? How much storage space do you really need? And which tools do you actually need, versus the ones a sales page just throws in for show?
Here is the short version of the answers, to use as a quick reference. A lot about choosing a web hosting provider depends on what your website needs, and every website has different needs, so treat this as a checklist rather than a single right answer.
Start with the first question: how do you know a good host from a bad one? Before doing business with any company that is going to matter this much to your website, search the company name and look for complaints or criticism. No provider has a 100% satisfied customer base, and finding one complaint online does not mean the company is bad. Every host has an unhappy customer somewhere. If you find a lot of complaints, though, especially the same complaint repeated by different people, move on to the next provider.
Bandwidth, Storage, and Support: What the Numbers Mean
Bandwidth and transfer are basically the same thing. A technical specialist might point out a small difference, but it will not matter much in practice. It is simply the number of times each file on your website gets downloaded from the host’s server to a visitor’s computer.
In other words, the size of your webpages in kilobytes, plus the size of every graphic or other file served to visitors, adds up to your transfer usage. If your site leans on a lot of graphics, video, or downloads, choose a plan with generous bandwidth. Most average websites do not need more than 2 to 5 gigabytes of transfer a month.
Storage space works the same way as your computer’s hard drive. A host offering 100 megabytes of storage is giving you the equivalent of a 100-megabyte hard drive; if your files add up to less than that, you have plenty of room. Most hosting companies now offer far more storage than the average website will ever use.
The remaining questions, what features to look for and which tools you actually need, come down largely to support. Does the host offer 24/7 tech support, and do you think you will actually need it? This is worth thinking through carefully. The internet runs around the clock, and so does your website, so the odds you will need help outside business hours are real.
How do you reach that support team? Email only? A phone number? Support tickets, a chatroom, or a forum? How accessible the tech support is will decide how fast problems get fixed when something breaks. Try sending a support question before you sign up, and see how quickly you get a reply, or whether anyone even answers the phone.
Bandwidth, storage, and support are not the only things worth checking. Does the host offer cPanel or another easy-to-use control panel for managing your site? Can they show you a sample before you commit? If the control panel is not user-friendly, are you comfortable enough to work directly in the root files instead?
How many databases does the plan allow? Do they offer instant-install or install-on-demand tools, like photo galleries, content management systems, forums, or blogs? It is also worth asking whether backups are automatic or something you have to set up and run yourself, because that answer matters a lot more the day something on your site actually breaks.
Ask all of this before signing up with any host. If the signup page does not spell it out, email the company and ask directly. Their response, or the lack of one, can tell you almost as much about them as the actual answer does, and it is a fair preview of what support will feel like once you are a paying customer.
Cheap is not always good, and this is your online business. Choose a web hosting service that makes your life easier, not harder. Also worth reading are our articles S Corporations– Filing The Election and Company Card Holder For Travellers. Related to this, see Buttercup, and for more of our behind-the-scenes explainers, our piece on the science of science.