Things that you need to check before you select a web hosting partner
Cheap or FREE hosting?
I recommend not to go to Free hosting.
Why?
You will find below difficulties in there.
- No or less customer support.
- Many downtimes
- Some free hosting providers put their own adds in the website
- Some free hosting providers do not allow to put our own adds
- Programming flexibility is less
What is dedicated and shared hosting?
Dedicated - You will have full control over the dedicated computer .
Shared - You will have limited web space and resourced shared with others.
What is the best?
As a beginner, you do not need dedicated hosting. Its expensive than Shared hosting.
How do I compare/evaluate two shared hosting providers?
Price Always do not go for cheap one. Price is only one factor.
You can find starting from 1$/month.
Guaranteed UP time - This is a key thing to consider. This should be 99.9% or above.
Web space At least you need 100Mb or more disk space.
Free tools There are free tools that they provide.
Control panel Most of providers have a demo version of control panel to check before buy.
Web stat Even though you dont think about this, this is the key to analyze visitors to maximize web traffic.
Applications Web server and a database .I recommend apache and mysql .
Additional charges and limitations Check bandwidth limit , add-on domain charges , adding sub domains etc.
Customer support This should be 24hour. Prefer if they have online chat facility.
Do a simple research in the web.
What do you recommend?
I have been in this field in past few years, and I had very bad experiences about bas hosting providers.
Finally I found a good hosting provider that I use for more than one year. That is http://www.hostgater.com.