You have many options when it comes to hosting your website, firstly you need to see how much you can afford per month. If you want a single site you will be best going for a smaller shared hosting company and upgrading once it makes money and gets a regular flow of traffic. If shared hosting isn’t for you and you would like more control and privacy over your site you can look into getting a dedicated server or a virtual semi-dedicated server which can be quite cheap if you find the right company.
Never let the price fool you, if you see a really cheap host which seems too good to be true, it more then likely will be. You get what you pay for, if you get a cheap host it will not be as reliable as a well known company. Make sure you do the research beforehand to ensure you are guaranteed fast customer service and 99% uptime. The worst thing you could do is to have a successful site on an unreliable host with little uptime as you are throwing money away.
Read up on the most common successful companies and check their testimonials to see what past users thought of the service, if you have any friends in the webmaster industry ask them who they are with and if they are happy with them.
Another factor to look at is the available bandwidth per month, if you go over the allowance some hosting companies will charge you extortionate rates which you cannot do much about. Keep an eye on the remaining allowance to make sure you upgrade your package before you go over the limit.
There are many features which come with your hosting packages so you need to make sure your host allows the use of them. For example if you plan on making a wordpress blog, you need to be able to use a MySQL database for each one so if your host doesn’t allow the use of databases then it’s no good for you. These features are becoming more of a standard characteristic but more and more are coming out so be sure to look for the best package for you. If you’re on a budget you don’t have to worry, you can still find a great hosting company for around $10+ a month which your site will most definitely pay for in the early stages.
