What Makes a Good Web Host?

First of all, pricing is definitely not what makes a web host good. It can be deceptive on the contrary.

In my opinion, a good web host should encompass these characteristics:

1. Customer-oriented - they should have a customer or technical support team that is 100% dedicated to serving their customers from head to toe such as providing support 24 hours a day, every single day. They should also train their support team to be knowledgeable, responsive, resourceful and patient.

2. User-friendly control panel - they should provide you with a good control panel that is easy to navigate and has some common 1-click functional tools to help you quickly set up and configure your website settings with ease. This is especially critical when you need to create a new website.

3. High-speed server - they should give you only the best performing server. A server that processes the requests of your web pages fast and then load them on your visitors' screen quickly will help you capture your visitors' hearts because nobody likes a slow website.

4. Excellent uptime - they should strive to keep your website uptime as high as possible so that you can make as much money as you like. You should realistically expect some website downtime because no matter how good a web host is, they will need to down their servers for maintenance.

Are these what makes a good web host?

Not yet. While the above 4 characteristics are crucial for you, a good web host should also have:

5. Tight security - they should have a powerful anti-hacker system in place to make sure your website is well protected all the time.

6. Resources for growth - not only they should offer a start-up hosting package for you if you're getting started, but they should also be ready for you if you need more powerful resources to accommodate your increasing traffic and satisfy your business growth.

7. No free hosting - they should not provide any free hosting service because free hosting usually attract spammers who are generally resource abusers. This is particularly critical for shared server users because if the server's IP address has been blacklisted because of spamming activities, good websites will get implicated since all websites under a server share the same IP address.

8. Money back guarantee - Because a good web host should never offer hosting for free trial, they should promise you money back in case you don't like their hosting service after the purchase.

These are essentially what makes a good web host. So, make sure you study the hosting company thoroughly because getting a wrong provider can give you hell.