Ricky Says

Question: How do I choose a web hosting provider, and which ones do you recommend?"

Answer: For readers who are wondering what a web hosting provider is, it's a company that stores your web pages and makes them viewable on the Internet.

There are literally hundreds of web hosting providers to choose from, and here are a few pointers to help you choose the right one for your website:

Know what kind of web site you want

If you're just looking for a place to experiment or load family pictures to share with friends, then you may be better off just using a free site like Facebook, or a site like Picasa Web Albums where you can store up to 1 gigabyte of photos and videos completely free thanks to Google.

Are you looking for a basic brochure/info site to let people know about your company, or are you looking for something collaborative with discussions and blogs?

I often have people ask me to help them build a new web site for their business, and the conversation usually goes something like this:

"Ricky, I'd like a real simple website for my new business idea. Nothing complex, but I want it to..." and they go on to explain how they want it to be a great user interface that's easy to use and let's people find everything they're looking for and makes them rich overnight. "Oh, and btw I only have a couple hundred dollars to invest and I need it right away".

LOL. My wife bought me a t-shirt for Christmas and it says "No, I will NOT fix your computer". I wish it said "No, I will NOT build your new web site!" :-)

Bottom line, you get what you pay for and if you want an amazing site for your business then you need to be willing to invest some serious money... or time - which brings us to our next point to consider.

What site building tools do they have?

Many web hosting providers have recognized the need for tools that make it easy to get started building a web site, that greatly reduce the time required to get up and running.

They may include several hundred dollars worth of site building software, or access to cPanel with SimpleScripts or Fantastico script support. These tools give you one-click installation of web site frameworks like Wordpress for a blog site or Drupal for a forum community site, including database support, email accounts, and the whole nine yards.

Price and Features

The playing field has leveled significantly over the last couple of years as hardware performance has increased greatly, and as costs have gone down. But there are still a few things worth considering to make sure you're getting as much as possible for your hard-earned money.

- Price. You shouldn't need to pay more than $6.95 a month for your web site, and look out for hidden setup fees or charges for adding additional databases or new domains to your account (discussed more below). Shop around - and I've listed out several web hosts worth looking at below - but don't sacrifice the other factors I've mentioned in this article for just a couple bucks savings a month.

- Free domain. Many hosting providers like HostMonster and Lunarpages give you a free domain name for life, and they let you park (reserve) as many other domains as you like.

- Bandwidth/Storage. This is the amount of traffic the site will support and the amount of file storage you can use. In most cases you'll receive far more bandwidth than your site will ever use, and in some cases the web host will even offer unlimited bandwidth (knowing you'll never actually use that much).

- Add-On Domains and Databases. If you install Wordpress or Drupal you'll need a database to store user accounts and site information, and if you come up with another website idea in the future you'll want to add a new domain name to your web hosting account.

Some web hosting providers give you only one database and don't let you add on additional domains to your account without paying extra, meaning you'll only be able to run one application that requires a database and you won't be able to create any other websites on your account without paying more money.

- Support. If your site is having problems, or if you need help getting started, then make sure the web hosting provider offers free technical support from an actual person.

Reputability

Last but of course not least is the tried and trued reputability factor. You're entering into a partnership. Do you know that your partner is trust-worthy? Do other people who you trust recommend their services and have they had good results with them in the past?

I've used a few different web hosting providers over the last decade or so and have worked indirectly with several others who have hosted web site of friends, colleagues, and business partners.

At the top of my list is my current hosting provider that I have run rickysays.com on for a few years now - HostMonster, and who I have used for several other websites. They provide real-time live support so I can pick up the phone and talk to a knowledgeable support tech 24/7 or I can send email or chat with a live technician.

I get over 150,000 unique visitors to rickysays.com each month (over 5000 a day!) and am able to run the site on a basic $6.95/month web hosting account with them. The site has only had a couple outages during that timeframe that were due to changes in the php code that runs the site (ie. programming errors that were my own fault, not HostMonster's - ). That's amazing performance and should be plenty robust for your new web site.

Web Hosting Provider Comparison

Here's a list of top web hosting providers and the features they offer. As you can see, they are all very competitive which makes it a harder choice if all you're going by is a feature comparison.

I'll mention that I used to host with Lunarpages (2nd on the list) and only switched when HostMonster came along with unlimited add-ons and databases several years ago (which let me expand to several other sites without any additional cost). Since then, Lunarpages actually added more features for a lower price, but I have too many sites installed on Hostmonster so it wouldn't be worthwhile for me to switch back.

Web Host	Domain Name	Email Addresses	Monthly Bandwidth	Storage	Databases	Add-on Domains	Monthly Price
HostMonster	Free	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	100 MySQL 100 PostgreSQL	Unlimited	$6.95
Lunarpages	Free	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	$4.95
StartLogic	Free	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	25 MySQL	Unlimited	$5.95
Blue Host	Free	2500	3000 GB	300 GB	50 MySQL 50 PostgreSQL	Unlimited	$6.95
Hostgator	Free	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited MySQL	Unlimited	$7.95
GoDaddy	$1.99 each	500	1500 GB	150 GB	25 MySQL	No	$6.99

* Last updated on Jan 17, 2010 - visit each provider to view current hosting plan options and features.

One thing to notice is that some web hosts offer unlimited websites but limit the number of databases you can have (e.g. Bluehost and StartLogic listed above). You won't be able to have more database-driven sites than the number of available databases, even if they offer unlimited domains.

Then again, if you're running more than 25 web sites on a single account then you're likely going to need to get a separate account to ensure decent performance, since all of those sites will share the same total amount of available resources that are allocated for your web site.

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