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This is one of the most important aspects, because if we rely on the wrong hosting service -- we might find our site often offline or loading unreasonably slow. And this is the saddest part, especially if you apply for awards and did your best to optimize each of your pages for a fast loading... when the evaluator enters he has no idea who's fault is it -- yours or your hosting service's, as a result the visitor loses patience and closes the window, and in this case -- evaluator -- gives your deduction points for the speed. So how do we know which host will suit our needs best? Here is some food for the thought...

• Price. I believe this is the first thing you look at. Some of us see no need to pay for what you can get free. Trust me, there are no good free hosts. Those who place ads on your website can provide somewhat better servers, as the advertising covers the costs, but in this case the ads on your pages will really wear out their welcome. Free and "temptingly cheap" hosts will either store your site on some oversold reseller, or on some ancient server machine that will be offline twice a week. Good hosting would cost between 3$ - 15$ a month (depending on plan), less than 3$ would be a little suspicious, and more than 25$ per, let's say, 1GB space / 20 GB traffic a month -- is slightly over priced.

• Scripts support is another thing that you better find out before registering. You need to think out in advance what scripts are you going to need. Don't mix "Fantastico" pre-installed scripts (such as pre-installed blog, forum, guestbook) and "scripts support" (i.e. supports php, php3, cgi-bin, pearl, MySQL databases, FrontPage extensions, etc). If you are planning to create dynamic email forum, ecards, newsletters, to make your own guestbook, forum -- make sure the programming languages mentioned above (SQL, php, cgi-bin) are enabled and do not come for additional price.

• Windows vs. Unix. The most commonly spread mistake is to think that if you are running Windows platform on your computer, you will need a Windows-based hosting. No, it doesn't matter what platform have you used for building your site, it can still be hosted on Unix, let alone Unix hosting will always be cheaper (since the owner doesn't need to cover the cost of the expensive software and everything that comes entailed, such as scripts which are only free for Unix). The only case in which you may need Windows hosting service is if your site based on .NET passport Framework, ASP, ASPX, or any other exclusively Microsoft's programming language.

• Servers' uptime. This factor "decides" how often your website is going to be online. The more uptime -- the better, but first thing you need to know is that there is no 100% uptime, and whoever guarantees 100% uptime simply lies. A good web host should have no less than 99.7% uptime, then again, assuming they are honest or provide some real time uptime monitoring. The majority of hosting company will say they guarantee 99.9% uptime and then, in some tiny light-grey letters, hidden somewhere in the end of the TOS agreement -- " ....it does not refer to problems stemming from: server hardware breakdown, user error(s) or purposeful interruption(s) of the user service (e.g. if the client shuts his/her own server down, host is not responsible for the downtime). Or, failures due to software that is not explicitly supported by the host, or power failure that is beyond the control of our Hosting service and responsibility for the resulting downtime. " Well, apart from restarting the Apache, these are the only reasons for downtime anyway. So as you can see, relaying on the company's word doesn't guarantee much. It is safe to say though, that it would be a big mistake to go with a service that guarantees 99.5% or less.

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• Security and stability. Does the hosting provides Spam filter for email service and a firewall? Do they have SSH Secure Shell and SSL certificate? Does the server backs up the data daily, weekly, or not at all? Easily hackable servers go offline often due to software and platform instability, plus you are taking the risk of getting a virus through your own website, receiving an infected email from server's admin, or just waiting for days until your site goes back online.

• Hosting Plan - Disk Space. When your site is finished, select all the files (including the sub folders) inside your site's main folder, right mouse click, and choose "properties". The summed size you get is the minimum disk space your are going to need. However, if your site's size is currently 97MB, it wouldn't be wise to go for a hosting plan that provides you with 100 MB. Every site grows with time, you may want to add some more media or photos, if you apply for awards means you will definitely have more images and pages with time, and it all will take additional space. Moreover, if you set email through your website (yourname@yourdomain.com), server stats, server, guestbooks, blogs -- it all goes at the cost of your remote server's space.

• Hosting Plan - Bandwidth. I guess this is always the hardest thing to estimate, unless you have the site running for a couple of months and can guess your needs. It's always good to have more bandwidth than you actually use, however, the more bandwidth -- the more expensive is the hosting plan. If you can estimate the number of visitors, you can roughly calculate the bandwidth usage, by taking the entire website's size, assuming that each visitor will only view 1/3 of it (don't be optimistic, this is exactly how much the average visitor views) and then multiply this sum (1/3 of your site's weight) by the number of visitors. This will give you a very rough idea. It's important to remember that any media files such as .midi files, Flash files, downloads, etc are consuming a lot of bandwidth and you should add them as an extra weight to your calculation. In order to avoid waste of money, you can start off with any basic plan (of course, if it gives you enough disk space) and keep an eye on bandwidth monitoring... if you feel you are consuming too much, upgrade to a bigger plan. It's very important to keep a track, at least once a week with your site's traffic and usage. I can tell you from my own experience that it's very annoying when one day you open your site and see an error page that the bandwidth was exceeded, you have no idea how long has it been offline and can only pray that your hosting company's staff will proceed with the upgrade a.s.a.p. Another widely used bait regarding this issue is when the hosting offers "unlimited bandwidth". There is no such a thing, unless you pay above 150$ a month. Bandwidth cannot be unlimited, at least not for any reasonable price, not to mention for free. It will either be limited in file size upload or some other limitation. No serious web host will offer you unlimited traffic for a decent cost.

• Support. Always preferable when your host provides an instant opportunity to chat with the customer's and technical support center 24/7. Find out within how many hours does the company guarantee to get back to you. Just like in case with bandwidth -- you never know whether you might need their quick support or not. When you have a question prior to registration, you are likely to get the quickest reply ever to your email and get a positive impression from their customer support, nevertheless this does not guarantee you will get the same service once you singed up and paid.

• Company's age. Some of you may see this is a prejudice, but I personally think that companies who has been around for a few years already are more likely to be here tomorrow, comparing to those who came online a few weeks ago. Don't forget that there are many scam and fraud out there, and high quality flash design of the site doesn't necessarily mean they provide a good host.

• All the small things like the amount of FTP accounts, server emails, sub domains, parked domains, add-on domains, and which server statistics are provided? Most important, is there a Control Panel (it's hard to find without, but maybe you will!) as well as number of MySQL databases, custom error pages, password protection access, Raw Access / Error Logs, SSL, SSH & SSI, POP3/IMAP and SMTP, web mail forwarding.. All really depends on your need and preferences.

• In conclusion... No one will give you a better review of the hosting service then a friend who used it, so just ask friends, who you know are satisfied with the service, support and uptime of a particular host. Think in advance what needs your website is going to have, so that you won't find yourself moving from one host to another every few months or willing to add a feature, unsupported by the server.
Feel free to use our Lorelei Web Free hosting Directory for finding teh best host.
Article written by Liza Kliko.