1. Read the Reviews
Always make sure you check out reviews for hosting services before you sign up to one, and don't just believe the hype on company's own homepage. There are a number of good review sites out there that will not only give you the pros and cons of each web hosting deal, but will also collate in one place all of the main features and prices of the packages, which makes it quick and easy to compare them against each other.
2. Billing Facilities
Make sure the web hosting company has a professional billing set up, and avoid any that only offer you one type of billing option such as PayPal. This indicates that they do not have sufficient business practices in place, which could translate to all of their services, including their server and software reliability, customer services and technical support.
3. Downtime
Even with a 99% uptime guarantee you could be looking as much as 1hrs and 45 mins of downtime every week, which is a significant amount of time if you are running an online business. Look out for web hosting services that offer 99.9% uptime guarantees, because this is as good as you can realistically get, and any downtime will be so little you will barely notice it.
4. Register Your Domain Name Separately
If you are going to use a hosting service then many packages will offer to register your domain name as part of the deal. However you will need to check the small print very carefully, as with some services once you have registered the domain name with the web hosting company, you will not be able to take it with you if you switch to another web host later on. Therefore it makes sense to register your domain name separately, so it is yours to do with as you please.
5. Avoid Free Web Hosting
Although free web hosting may sound like a fantastic deal, there are several important downsides that mean that these services will not be very suitable for the majority of website designers. Firstly free web hosting accounts will have very limited design capabilities and also limited services for storage, bandwidth and technical support. Also the companies providing the free web hosting services will still have to make money somehow from their seemingly generous offers, and this will usually involve placing advertising on your website, and it is unlikely you will have any control over what the adverts are for or where they are placed on the site.
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