The success of your website depends on the quality of the web hosting service you choose. Keep reading to find out more about the different web hosting solutions you should consider.

There are a few things that should be immediate red flags. Stay away from web hosting services that do not provide a lot of information on their site or have been around for less than three years. You should know that thousands of new web hosts appear each year but a very small percentage survives. If you are looking at free web hosts, avoid the ones that will place unrelated ads on your site. You should also call customer services and ask some precise questions on the servers. If no one is able to answer you, you might have found a service that actually rents server space from another web host. Avoid these services since you will not be able to get anyone to fix your technical issues.

If you do not want to spend anything on web hosting, take the time to compare different free options. The best free web hosting solutions are often offered by hosts that find clients through free hosting and provide them with better solutions once they are ready to upgrade. You should also consider using a blog until you are ready to invest in a real website. Use a popular blogging platform and personalize the template you choose as much as possible. Associate your blog with a professional domain name and structure it like a website by creating pages and a menu instead of articles.

You will have access to many additional features if you spend money on a good web hosting service. Make a list of the features you need for your site. You should be able to find site-building plugins, analytical and optimization tools, email addresses with your domain name, message boards and online stores. And if you want to store your customers’ information, get a secure database too. Assess your needs so you know what kind of plan you should look for.

There are a few things you absolutely need to launch a successful site. You need to purchase enough storage space for your site to grow over the next six months. You also need to find a plan with no restriction on the amount of bandwidth you can use, an uptime of 99.9 percent and a quality customer service that will let you know when maintenance is scheduled and be able to help you when you encounter difficulties. And if you use a shared server, make sure your web host will monitor what people upload so your server does not end up being banned because other users uploaded illegal content. And if possible, choose a web host that offers different plans so you can easily upgrade when you decide you need more features or more storage space.

Take the time to compare different options. And if the web host you chose is not reliable enough, do not hesitate to switch to a different service.