Choosing a quality web hosting service means your site will be accessible at all times. Keep reading to find out what you should look for in a web hosting service.

Before subscribing to a web hosting plan, you should read carefully through all the material available on their website and do some background research to find reviews on the web host. Select a web host with a good reputation and at least four years of existence. Any web host that has been created in the last two years is likely to go out of business quickly. Find out more about the servers used; does this service own servers or are they merely providing access to rented server space? Subscribing to a plan that gives you access to rented server space is usually cheaper, but you are taking the risk of having your site hosted with illegal sites. Besides, you will have no one to contact in case there is a technical issue with the server.

Find out if there are any restrictions on your use of bandwidth. Ideally, you should subscribe to a plan with unlimited bandwidth but some web hosting services have a different definition of ‘unlimited’. Your use of bandwidth might be restricted to times of the day where you are not likely to get much traffic. Any restrictions on your use of an ‘unlimited’ amount of bandwidth should be an immediate red flag. You also need to pay attention to storage space. Get a plan with enough storage space for your site and the material you plan on adding in the next year. Getting a plan with more storage than you need means you will not have to move your site to a new server anytime soon.

Find out what the uptime percentage is for the service you are interested in. Most services advertise an uptime of 99.9 percent; this corresponds to occasional updates and maintenance. If the uptime is under this number, there might be recurring technical problems with the servers. Avoid any service with an excessive amount of downtime. Find out when updates are scheduled and whether or not you will be notified in advance. Keep in mind that any kind of downtime means you might lose customers; make sure updates will be made when you are not likely to get a lot of visitors.

Look for additional features you will need but do not pay for services you do not plan on using. Some web hosting services will register your domain name for you and provide you with a certain number of email addresses associated with this domain name. You might want to register your domain name with a different service so you can keep it if you decide to cancel your web hosting plan. You might also lose your email addresses if you cancel your plan. There are other features you should find out about, such as the languages and plugins supported. Make sure your server will support everything you intend on using to build your site.

Apply these tips to select the best web hosting service available. Take the time to compare your options and do some research about different services before you decide which on you want to use.