Good Quality Web Hosting Doesn't have to be Expensive

If you want to have your own website, whether for business or personal use, you will need a web hosting service to put your site on one of its servers. These servers are connected to the Internet by high speed links, and they are what connects your site with Internet users' browsers all over the world.

Servers are housed in climate controlled warehouses called "data centers" or sometimes "server farms." Chances are, your hosting provider has dozens of servers housing thousands of websites. Host companies offer the technical and data integrity expertise so that you are free to concentrate on your site's content and layout rather than worrying about the care and operation of the server.

Any good host provider offers security based on "redundancy," which refers to the company's server backup record and their emergency plans. If any of your Internet connections were to be interrupted, redundancy software would keep your site running with no downtime. In fact, most decent hosting companies offer 99.9% uptime, and you should accept no less.

There are so many host providers that it may be difficult to know where to begin to narrow down your choices. Our site sifts through hundreds of host companies' statistics, offers, reviews and opinions. We rank hosting companies by the best price to value ratio. Other features we considered are reliability, uptime, customer support, customer feedback, and user friendliness. The top 10 best web hosts as listed by castironhostingreview.com all have monthly fees under $10 and a 30 day trial period with money back guarantee.

The top ranked web hosting provider for 2008 is a company called HostMonster which offers shared hosting starting at $5.95 per month.

Any top level hosting service should offer a number of features standard. These are features that used to cost an extra $10 or so per month, but that are now included as part of the base package. The standard features you should look for include:

Web builder software. One popular web page builder is called SiteStudio, which allows you to make web pages even if you don't know any HTML, FTP, or HTTP programming. SiteStudio comes with over 500 prefabricated templates to make your website design easier.

E-commerce features. If you plan to host your business on the web, you need a way to handle transactions securely. Top hosting providers generally come with a shopping cart program and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption so you can securely process credit card numbers and other sensitive information.

Help with marketing. Outstanding hosting providers offer search engine submission, web index submission, keyword generators, and link checkers. Some will offer free Google Adwords credits to help you advertise your fledgling web business.

The popularity of a given hosting service is often increased by one-on-one recommendations. That is why new hosting companies are so eager for your business, and why older companies are willing to go that extra mile to keep you as a customer. Web hosting is a very competitive industry.

Additional factors that will help you decide if a host is reliable are 1) the number of existing customers, 2) positive reviews on discussion forums and web directories, and 3) The site's Alexa rating, which is based on web traffic patterns of sites. However, you should take the Alexa statistics with a pinch of salt. Late in 2008, Amazon, owner of Alexa, announced that Alexa was not accepting new customers and that the service would be discontinued in 2009.

Beginning webmasters have an overwhelming number of options when it comes to web hosting companies. It is imperative to know what your business or personal goals are for your website. You need to know whether your site will require lots of bandwidth, which it will if it involves customers downloading audio or video files. Disk space will also be important if you plan to have lots of fancy graphics. Once you decide on a promising host service a little research and sleuthing up front can save you time, money, and frustration later.