Choosing a good host is one of the most important decisions you will make about your online business. A poor host provides constant distractions, downtime, or content loss. With a good host, your website is available 99.9% of the time, loads rapidly, and has sufficient space and bandwidth.
Perhaps the most critical part of a good web hosting company is its support. Test a prospective host: send them a question by email or live chat, or even call. If you don’t get a helpful answer quickly, or can’t reach a support person, look elsewhere. You will have technical support issues sooner or later, and every minute you wait for help is a minute you are losing money.
Space and bandwidth are important in your web host decision. If you are running a small e-commerce site, space is a minor issue unless you are hosting lots of video or pictures. A 10 GB plan is plenty for a single website. New websites with little traffic also need little bandwidth. However, to make money you will need traffic, so make sure there is room to grow. Also decide whether you will host one website or several. Many hosting packages support a single domain, while others let you add more. If you are likely to host additional websites, look for a plan that allows add-on domains.
Consider what other hosting features you need. If you are running an e-commerce store, you will need PHP and MySQL as part of your hosting package. Anything beyond simple HTML pages, such as WordPress or Joomla, needs those tools. If you are interested in great web tools such as WordPress but lack technical experience, look for a one-click installer, such as Softaculous, in your host’s control panel. It makes installing these systems simple.
Finally, consider price. Basic shared hosting is inexpensive. At this stage, you likely don’t need a VPS or dedicated server, so stick with an affordable shared plan that meets the requirements above. Even the more powerful shared plans cost only a few dollars a month, and will meet your hosting needs for some time to come.