T’ was a stormy night twenty years ago when the electricity flickered out.As battery backups hummed to life, I flipped on the gas generator to keep the lifeblood flowing through our customer’s websites. A year before that, I was another hopeless entrepreneur who kept a close eye (the removable glass one) on my expenses with a mindset for keeping them as low as possible.Web hosting was more expensive back when the Internet was relatively young and dumb (or maybe just less arrogant), and as my website portfolio ballooned, it hit me like a Mac truck on a slip and slide, “How hard could it be to host all these myself?”
Well, geez, yeah — a lot harder than I thought. Particularly if one is going to try to do it well.Fast forward a couple of decades and there are web hosting providers flaunting their wares on every virtual street corner. The evolution of technology and the advent of scalable reseller programs have made it possible for even trend-setting Aunt Gertrude to startup her web hosting empire in the sewing room between episodes of Golden Girls.However, as sweet as she is (despite playing Bingo with a baseball bat), that doesn’t mean she should get your business. Consider for a moment that she’s merely reselling someone else’s service.
Her Midas touch doesn’t magically transform it into a great service, it just means she approved of the profit margins when she filled out the sign-up form and uploaded her company logo.With all the noise and considerable amount of industry-specific jargon clouding your senses, it’s more important than ever to educate yourself before pulling the trigger on lengthy commitments.
And the concern isn’t so much from a financial perspective (since web hosting won’t set you back like a good hip surgery), but mainly because you don’t want to build your baby on a sucky platform — particularly when you have no idea and are unaware of how much it’s holding your site back from achieving its full potential.
The point of this guide is to help you cut through the noise (i.e. crap),
educate you, and provide you confidence in your decision. We’ll pinpoint which web hosting criteria matter most to most people and, in some cases, show you how to test the web hosting companies you are considering to see how they really stack up to their claims.
Without further ado, here are the top 15 tips ranked in order of priority. Make it through this and you’ll have the tools to give Aunt Gertrude a run for her money.
