With so many companies on the market, choosing the best hosting plan can be a truly daunting experience if one doesn’t know exactly what he is searching for.

What platform do I need - Windows or Linux?

The first step is choosing the right platform – Windows or Linux. If your site is ASP, .NET or C# then you need Windows hosting. If you write on PHP, Perl or Python then you need Linux hosting. You are going to need Linux server if you use one of the popular open-source CMS systems like WordPress, Joomla or Pligg. If you want to host plain HTML sites then both hosting platforms can do the job for you. But bear in mind that Linux hosting plans are generally cheaper than the Windows plans which explains why more than 70% of the sites worldwide are hosted on Linux.

How much space do I need for my site?

The next important step is to determine the web hosting space we are going to need. Start with the type of site you’re going to host – personal, business, video, image, social. In general the last 3 options require lots of resources compared to the rest. You need to think here if you need to get an unlimited hosting plan or can save some money and go with limited. Another thing to consider is how many sites you’re going to host at the same account (yeah, most hosting companies now provide multiple domain hosting with their unlimited plans).

How much monthly traffic I need?

The monthly bandwidth is another important factor to consider. For small business site or personal blog you don’t need unlimited traffic in general. If you plan on hosting few sites at the same account, then unlimited traffic is the better option instead a few limited plans.

How to know if the hosting company is stable and reliable?

In general the stability and reliability of a given web hosting company depends on few factors like: is there a direct connection to the backbone of the Internet; is there a load balancer; is there a fire suppression system; for how long it has been operating, etc. As a rule of thumb, always choose a company that has been on the market for at least 3-4 years and there’s enough reviews about it.

How important is the technical staff and customer support?

It’s absolutely necessary that the hosting company employs qualified engineering staff and helpful customer support. Even the best hardware sometimes fails but if the company has the right people to take care about such outages the downtime would be insignificant. This is especially true for commercial sites where each second they are not reachable can cost money loss.

What is the fair price for a good hosting plan?

As in most other industries, quality costs money. If you need quality fast hosting, with professional technical support and minimal security and downtime problems then you do not need to save on hosting. As always the price is not a guarantee about quality, that’s why I suggest you first choose few hosting plan that suit your needs and just after that consider the price. In most cases you can test the chosen plan for one month and if you’re not happy they give you back your money. You should know that the big webhosting companies never make trouble out of this and in case you ask for your money you would get them, no questions asked.

What else should I look at when choosing a hosting plan?

Other important parameters to look at are: the possibility for multiple domain hosting, the number of email accounts, the number of databases, number of allowed sub-domains, parked domains, cron jobs, one click script installs, control panel. You should also consider the web server location - currently we offer US hosting and UK hosting