Choose the Best Web Hosting Provider

So you have planned your website and chosen a domain name. Now you need a web hosting provider. With so many companies competing for your business, how do you choose the right one?

The truth is that many providers will do the job well, so shop around for a plan that gives you what you need at a fair price. Here are the main things to consider when you make this important decision.

Windows or Linux?

Hosting companies run their servers on one of two platforms, Windows or Linux. Both come with easy control panels, so the real difference is the software your site needs. Sites built with ASP.NET and Microsoft SQL Server need Windows hosting. Sites built with PHP and MySQL, which includes WordPress, Joomla and Drupal, run on Linux. Most small websites today use Linux hosting, and many companies offer both.

Bandwidth and Disk Space

Bandwidth is the amount of data your site can send to visitors each month. Every time someone visits, your server sends the files their browser needs to show the page, so a site with hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors needs a lot of bandwidth, while a family website visited a few times a day needs very little. Many plans are sold as “unmetered”, but they still have fair-use limits, so read the small print.

Make sure the plan also gives you enough disk space for all your site’s files, with room to grow. Fast SSD or NVMe storage is now standard and makes a noticeable difference to speed.

Uptime

Uptime matters for every site and especially for commercial ones. Look for a host that commits to at least 99.9% uptime and explains what it does when it misses that target. You do not want visitors to find an error page instead of your site.

Access and Features

You will want secure file access at any time, through SFTP or the control panel’s file manager, so that you can upload changes day or night. Other features that may matter to you include:

• A free SSL certificate that renews automatically
• Email accounts on your own domain
• Databases, subdomains and email forwarders
• Automatic backups and an easy way to restore them
• Visitor statistics and server logs
• A one-click installer for WordPress and other applications

Check the Terms for Your Kind of Site

Every host has an acceptable use policy, and some topics are treated differently. Gambling is a good example: most mainstream hosts accept informational and affiliate sites about legal casinos and betting, but some restrict gambling advertising, and almost none of them will host the engine of a real-money platform on a shared plan. If you are building a casino review site or a tipster blog, read the policy before you pay, and look at our notes on hosting a casino review site.

Read Reviews, Then Decide

Keep these points in mind and you will not go far wrong. Reviews of individual hosting providers are a good place to start your search, as long as you check that the plan you read about is the plan on sale today.