Choosing the right web host for your website is one of the most important decisions you will make when first starting online. Your web host is responsible for hosting your website and making sure your website is always available to people and running at peak speed.

Imagine for moment if you are running a marketing campaign for one of your website and you are all set to receive visitors and take orders. Now of a sudden your website is down and worse of all you can’t contact them to solve your issue. You are looking at the prospects of losing few hundreds if not thousands of dollars in marketing and opportunity costs. Worst of all, your visitors may not come back at all even after your website is up again.

That’s why it’s important to select a web host which can provide reliable hosting with minimum downtime and fast technical support. I have compiled a list of guidelines below which you can refer to when choosing a suitable web host. Hope you find them useful.

1. Disk space. It’s good to know how much disk space you can have for your hosting package and a bigger disk space will be good for those who plan to offer lots of downloads of eBooks, software, or other large files for people.

2. Fast servers. How fast your pages load depends on how fast your web host’s servers are. Obviously the faster the better, right.

3. Web-based administration. This feature allows you to access and manage your server through the web and is great for those who are not technically inclined.

4. Technical support. How fast and responsive their technical support is very important. It will be very frustrating if you need to wait for days for a reply. Before I sign up for a hosting package, I will email their technical support to find out how long it takes them to reply back.

5. Downtime. Your web host should be up between 99% and 100% at all times. Choose one that has a low downtime.

6. Longevity of business. The longer they are in business, the more reliable and trustworthy, if not they won’t be in business for that long.

7. Backups. A web host that provides daily off-site back ups of your server ensure that you will not lose any information in the event of a hard disk or server crash,

8. Access to raw server logs. A important feature to have as you need this information to analyze your website traffic.

9. SSH and FTP access. Make you’re your web host allow you to transfer files back and forth between your computers and your web server. Insist on public FTP option too.

10. Secure server. To sell anything online, you must need a web host with secure server capabilities. With a secure server, private information like credit cards numbers can be sent through without fear of interception. Without a secure server, there are fewer chances of people buying from you.

For a list of good and reliable web hosts, check out my “Recommended Resources” section.