How To Choose Your Web Host

1. Use a popular web host.

That cheapo one might be an uncommitted reseller. I used one recently. Very cheap, and very helpful. Then my site went 'missing'. By the Grace Of God I was able to get in contact with the owner, and make a backup, before the service was closed down. I found out later he had only about six customers.

Use a popular web host. Avoid ones that are trying to attract customers by undercutting rates to silly levels. If a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is.

2. Their Google PageRank gives a clue as to how popular they are.

This will irk the smaller hosts, but if your site is a serious one, put it on a serious host. Web hosting costs peanuts these days. People can be funny about spending an extra $5 a month. You'll wish you'd paid $500 when your site goes skew-whiff, and you can't get a reply from their technical support.

3. Send them an email or two. See how long it takes to get a reply.

This can be very revealing. If they take two days to get back to a potential customer, how long do they take to answer their _existing_ customers?

4. Check out their forums; how busy are they? They don't have a forum? Next!

They should have enough customers to run a forum, and care enough to have one. Reading it can give you a clue as to what their support is like. Likewise, see when they had the last news update on their site. If it was long ago, they may be moribund.

5. Technical Support.

This is as important as the features they supply. It's no good having a Virtual Private Server for $10.00 a month if there's no one there to answer your emails when the hard-disk fails.

6. Features.

Most geeks favour Unix. It's been around longer, and is more stable. Web hosts offering Unix variants like Linux have always been cheaper. They also seem to offer a wider range of toys. I need SSI (Server Side Includes), SSH (secure Telnet), 10 MySQL databases, Cpanel, PHPMyAdmin and a UK IP number. And you can get this for $15 a month.

Things like MySQL databases, Cpanel and SSH access are real sticking points for a lot of web hosts. If they're generous with these, you've found a rare jewel.

7. Word Of Mouth.

Webmasters are always asking about web hosts on webmaster forums. Find a few recent threads, and note who gets the most votes. Search engines, on the other hand, have been spammed by some hosts. If you do a search on 'the best web hosts' or 'top 10 web hosts' you'll get puff pages. Recent opinions from professional webmasters are the best.

Site5 Web Hosting Review

I have been hosting some of my websites with Site5 for about a year now. I also have other websites hosted in other web hosting companies. Here is my review for site5 based on my own personal experience with them

Why I choose Site5

I got to know about Site5 through the webhostingtalk forums. At that time, I was searching for a reliable and reputable cheap web hosting company for a couple of my new websites. And I’ve heard a lot of good reviews about Site5 and so decide to try them out. Since they have a 60 day money back refund, I figure if I did not like it, I would ask for my money back. Anyway, I was basically testing their web hosting on my new websites so I was not terribly affected.

Site5 Hosting Plan

Site5 only offer two types of hosting plan : shared and reseller. So I took the superhosting extreme package. Basically here’s the brief web hosting package details :

Diskspace : 8GB
Bandwidth : 500GB
Multisite Accounts : 5
Unlimited : domain pointers, ftp, mysql

It also comes with fantastico, cpanel. All this for about $109 annually which is pretty cheap. Please note this hosting plan is no longer available and is replaced with multisite dynamite plan. It is basically the same as my previous plan except for more diskspace and bandwidth. As I’m writing this, they have a promotion where you can get this hosting plan for 2 years at only $149 which I consider to be a good deal.

Unique Features of Site5 hosting

One feature I like about site5 hosting is the multisite accounts. It is basically a full featured control panel for each domain. Unlike other shared web hosting companies which uses domain pointers, a multisite accounts exists on its own with its own subdomains, domain pointer, ftp, mysql etc. This help me to organize my websites better especially if you have a lot of domains. You can set the diskspace and bandwidth from the main pool of your web hosting account.

The other feature is the flashback which allows you to undo any changes you make to your website. It is a life saver especially when a website breaks down and you do not know the cause.

Things that can be improved

Though I like Site5 and would recommend it to friends, there are a few things that could make it better. One of them is the upgrade option. I recently upgraded my hosting plan to multisite dynamite and was told I had to shift to another server. The problem was I had to do the data transfer myself. With 3GB of data to transfer, not to mention the dozens of ftp, mysql and email accounts, it was a real hassle. Something I am sure their staff could have easily completed in a short time.

The other thing I didn’t like was I could not request for more IP addresses. If you know about SEO, then you know how having multiple IP addresses can be useful.

In all, I would still recommend site5 due to its cheap web hosting plan, good support and high availability.