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3 Steps For Finding Good Hosting Sites Online

Hosting your business website online requires several steps. There are thousands of website hosting providers online. Picking one out of the sea is going to be difficult and take a lot of time unless you have a plan. This is my 3 step plan I've used to host over 100 different websites over the past 10 years.

1. Ask other websites like yours

If you have some favorite websites that you visit all the time, asking them is a great place to start. You will want to approach them by email and ask who they use as their hosting provider. Typically each website will have a Contact Us page or some way to get in touch with the owner. If you can't find anything, you can try to email the webmaster address which is usually "webmaster" at the domain. When you contact them, keep the email brief and to the point. A good example that I use is:

Webmaster:

I really enjoy your site and I am building my own website right now. I was wondering if you could give me a recommendation on a reliable hosting company or even tell me the name of your hosting company.

Thanks,
Your Name

One thing to keep in mind is to only approach sites that are in the same industry as you and about the same size as your site. If you are building an e-commerce store, you don't want to email Microsoft asking about their website. Also emailing Amazon would be a bad idea, even though they are also an e-commerce store they are much bigger than your website.

2. Search for web hosting reviews online

If you search for reviews of different web hosting companies online, you should get an idea for which ones appear most often. Some sites will even put together a directory or report on the best web hosts in a single market. Make sure you avoid sites that are only promoting a single web host, many times these can be fake reviews.

3. Contact the support for the web host

Once you have a small list of web hosts you want to try, you should contact their support team and ask a simple question. Doing this will let you test the support team and see how responsive they are. If the support team gets back to your quickly and with a good answer, then you can probably expect the service to be just as good once you sign up.

Some hosting providers will require you to be a customer before you can contact support. An insider tip here is: to sign up for the hosting account, ask your question, and then take advantage of any money back guarantee they offer if you are unhappy with the support response.

Finding a good hosting site will take some time but it's better to do this before you jump on-board with a company you never heard of. Moving away from a bad host is a very stressful experience and is something you want to avoid at all costs.

Remember, a great web host will be completely transparent to you. You shouldn't even know that they are there. A bad web host on the other hand will be a thorn in your side every single day.

By: Daniel Sam Quitzon

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