There are many kinds of web hosting providers, as well as their services. When it comes to choosing the right one to host your website, some simple guidelines should be followed. Depending on your website nature (personal or business website) and the availability of a domain name you have the option to choose between free or paid hosting.

Generally free hosting service provides you a subdomain name that you can use. But, when you choose a free hosting you should be aware that many limitations could exist, such as storage (web space), FTP access, CGI access (the possibility to install PHP scripts for example).

On the other hand, the paid hosting services offer many advantages as compared to free hosting. The most common platforms for webhosting are Linux and Windows. Depending on your website structure, you should decide what the right platform is. The server uptime (the time while the server is online) is an important criterion to select the web hosting company. It is admitted as optimal a minimal server uptime of 99%. You should also pay attention to the web space and data transfer (bandwidth) offered.

If you exceed the bandwidth offered in your hosting plan, then it could be possible in many cases to pay extra money for the exceeded limit. To be sure that this will not happen then you must evaluate your site size and the number of visitors during the hosting period. If you do not know how to estimate the site traffic, the web hosting company could do that for you. Even if the web hosting company presents "unlimited bandwidth" as its offer you should also check the terms of use for the services offered. If you have a business website you will need POP3 email accounts. In case you want to install server side scripts (for example php or asp), you must have both FTP and CGI access.

You must also analyse if the web hosting provider gives you tools to administer your hosting account or for web building, for example to edit web pages from a web browser, to access the server log file, to create subdomains or redirect an existing domain, to create and edit new databases. The web hosting providers must backup your site for free or give you the applications needed to make the backup yourself. When you decide to buy the services of a certain webhosting company, you should check also the reviews made by existing or former users that will give you an insight of what you should do. It is better to compare two or more webhosting services in order to decide what is best for you.