If you have a website, you need to have a web host. You may not know too much about web hosting, but you would do well to learn as much as you can about it, since it can be a big part of whether people can use your site.

This article has some great tips for choosing a good web host.

Do not choose a web host that does not offer automated billing or payment options because there could be outages within the server the outage could last for over a day. By choosing yourself a web host that have automated options you can save yourself a lot of time and trouble.

When transferring your site between hosts, have a copy of your website at both your old and new hosts for a few days. It’s important to do this because it takes 6-48 hours for the DNS to propagate. During this time, some visitors will be sent to your old website, while others whose ISPs have updated their DNS info will be sent to your new site.

Thinking about using a free web host for your new website? Remember that free hosts rarely offer backup features. If you go with this option, you should be diligent in backing up your own data. As a result, if anything disappears, you’re out of luck.

To prepare yourself for the experience of using a free web host, get used to the idea that you will have a lot of downtime. Staying up all the time takes some specialized equipment that free hosts don’t really have the budget for. As a result, your site may be down more than it is up.

Make sure that you understand the difference between managed and un-managed web hosting. Those that are managed can be invaluable to you if you are not an expert yourself on the intricacies of maintaining a website. You will want to choose a managed one who has excellent availability of technical support teams.

In fact, many web hosting companies rely on other major hosting companies to host. These types of companies buy huge blocks of web server capacity at a bulk discount, then re-sell it in smaller chunks to individual web site owners. Find out who the main host is, if possible, and then see if you can get a better deal by buying directly.

If you are going to obtain a shared web hosting solution, conduct some research on the websites that you will be sharing your server with. You should definitely avoid sharing servers with websites that participate in spam due to the fact that if any of these websites receive an IP address ban from search engines or internet service providers, your website will be banned along with them. Adult websites in particular tend to participate in these kinds of activities.

Choosing the right web host can be a challenge, but if you follow the tips in this article and do your research, the process can be much easier.

Make sure you understand the tips and keep them in mind as you search for web hosting; it can make a difference to the success of your site, so pay attention and choose well.

By Alex