After picking a domain name, the next question you’ll ask yourself is “how do I choose a web host?” Whether your purpose is business or pleasure, one of the most crucial parts in building a website is deciding on a company that will host your site.  The performance of your web host will determine the accessibility and success of your website.  While some decide to choose free web hosts, paying for the service has a definite advantage.

Here are a few tips about how to choose a web host:

• Decide what services you want from your web host.  You might get confused about features such as MySQL or Perl or PHP. Features like that increase the cost of hosting a website.  If you don’t know about these services, chances are you don’t need them.  Just jot down all the things you want included in your website: do you want a forum?  A shopping cart? Video capability?  Look for a web host that offers all the services you need.
• How much bandwidth do you want your website to handle?  The huge difference between free and paid web hosts is the amount of traffic the website can use.  Free websites have a can only handle a specific amount of bandwidth, if your website generates too much traffic it will be disabled for some time.  Generally, a few hundred MB per month is enough for a personal web site.  However, if you have a commercial website, you’ll want to have much more bandwidth.
• Speed is perhaps the most important.  No matter how beautifully you design your web site, if it can’t be displayed within a few seconds, it’s useless.   It’s frustrating to wait a few minutes for just the home page to be displayed. Your website should be able to be accessed quickly even by dial up users.
• Don’t believe anything “unlimited”.  You may see ads from various web hosts offering unlimited disk space or bandwidth.  Those things don’t exist.  If you want a large amount of disk space, bandwidth or web space, you’ll have to pay.  The amount varies depending on the purpose of your website.