There are thousands of web hosting services to choose from. This article is here to help you find a solution that is both affordable and reliable.

Establish your needs carefully. If you want to run an online business, you should avoid free web hosting solutions since you will not get quality customer service and cannot count on the servers being up and running all the time with this kind of plans. If you need to cut down on costs, select a shared hosting solution. This means you will be sharing a server with other websites. Before you subscribe to one of these plans, read the policies of your web host carefully and find out how these policies are enforced. Your host should immediately delete illegal content; if your site is hosted on a server along with illegal websites, internet access providers will eventually block the I.P. address of this server.

Find out more about the uptime of your host. Most web hosting services advertise an uptime of 99%. The 1% of downtime should correspond to updates and maintenance; read reviews written by clients to find out if there are any recurring technical problems or if the updates are scheduled at inconvenient times. You should not subscribe to a service with an uptime of less than 99%. This is usually a sign of a web host that does not take good care of the servers or cannot afford to invest in new equipment.

Look for a web host with a wide selection of plans so you can upgrade yours if you need to. Your website might still be relatively small, but it will quickly grow if you plan on adding more material. Select a plan with enough storage space so your site can expand to a certain point before having to upgrade. If possible, get a plan with unlimited bandwidth and make sure there are no restrictions to your usage of bandwidth. If you cannot afford one of these plans, get an amount of bandwidth that corresponds to your traffic and upgrade your plan as your site becomes more popular. Make sure your web host will not charge you additional fees if you exceed your amount of bandwidth.

Select a web host that has been created more than five years ago. Most web hosting services do not survive more than a year; you might find that newer services are cheaper but you cannot count on them. You might find yourself without a web hosting solution overnight. To be safe, you should have an account with a free web host or a very affordable one as a backup solution in case your primary web hosting service closes. Do not register your domain name with your web host; you should use a separate service so you can keep your domain name and change the redirection settings if you cancel your subscription to your web hosting plan.

Use these tips to select the best web hosting service available. Remember that quality is more important that savings.