Things to look for when choosing a new web host.

'Cheat sheet' help needed ;)

[bouncybunny]

Hi

I am drawing up a kind of ten point plan for a project and I would be fascinated to hear what criteria members of this forum feel is important when you look at choosing a new a web host.

I appreciate that many of you probably 'roll your own' with regards to running a web server. But I was thinking mainly of tips for 'non-technical' professionals who are looking at shared hosting, or small scale reseller accounts.

[bouncybunny]

To get the ball rolling, I'll start with 5 of my own.

1. Personal recommendations. Always tip number 1 as far as I'm concerned.

2. Check if the host has a forum with a 'pre-sales' section and sign up and see how long they take to respond and how open they are about answering your awkward questions.

3. Never buy the domain name from the same company as hosts your web sites.

4. When buying a domain name, make sure that the registrar will not charge you should you want to move the registration to another company.

5. Choose a web host that will allow you to pay monthly, rather than demand yearly payment.

[Quadrille]

#1 Value For Money - all else needs to be looked at; for example, an unreliable host is always poor VFM - but all other factors come waaay down the list.

[ringsoft]

This might not help, but in my experience, you can only judge how good a hosting company is when something goes wrong - in other words, support. They can promise all sorts of 99.9% uptime, but when your site is down, or php has stopped working, or its mailservers aren't responding and a client is howling at you, can you reach someone on the phone?

Anyone can run a hosting company when all is going smoothly. It's how they react when things go wrong that counts.

Personal recommendation is as good a method as any. Failing that, search Google Groups for good/bad experiences of hosting companies.

[misteroriginal]

I'll have to say, "Heck, yes!" to the bouncybunny's #5. I paid for a host for a year, who went bankrupt. They sold the account to a company that didn't give a flying care.

So I'd say...
1) Make sure the host is financially sound.
2) Decide what platform you need? Windows/Linux? ASP/PHP/Coldfusion?
3) Check the included software version numbers. Is it MySQL 3.23, 4.0, 4.1, 5.0, etc? It can make a big difference.
4) Make sure SSL certificates and secure-shell access are easily available.
5) Check out what happens if you exceed your bandwidth. Does your site shut down? Do your fees go throuh the roof? Do you find a horsehead in your bed?
6) The bandwidth, webspace, memory, and processor speed numbers can be about as real as the trade-in value of your car. How many other websites are packed on the server, sharing resources, and what are the guaranteed minimums?

I'm running out of steam.

[BigDave]

Make sure that the host offers the services that you need.

If you can, visit some high volume dynamic sites that they host. Do this several times of day and see how fast they respond.

Most important, do a bunch of searches on the hostname and "sucks", "complaint", "downtime", "service" and whatever else you can think of.

Every hosting company will have complaints. What I would look for is whether there seems to be any consistancy to those complaints.