Choosing a good web host can be a serious pain and can give you headache in case you don’t make a wise decision. There are thousands and thousands of web hosting services and it gets difficult to choose one of them because when you have got ample amount of choices, it’s difficult to make the decision (In case you don’t agree to me, try and take your girlfriend/wife to a jewelry shop and ask them to buy one item).

In this guide, I’ll try and give you points on how to choose the web host and the question you should ask them before finalizing the package.

What to look in the features ?

It’s a dicey question as it really depends a lot on your requirement however, I’ll try to answer this question from every point.

1. Cpanel/Fantastico : Ensure that you are get a control panel and preferably Cpanel because it’s the best control panel for managing the web hosting space you get. If you get Fantastico along with it, then the life will be super simple as installing WordPress will be a breeze.

2. More bandwidth : It always makes sense if you take more bandwidth. Even if you get space of up to 1 Gb (sufficient for any small blog) but you get around 10 Gb of bandwidth, then it’s a good deal. However, there are many blogs which need more bandwidth because they get lot of traffic. However for a start, you can settle with a low package and as you see your requirements going up, you can make the shift.

3. More database & domain : Try to get a package which offers you to create many database. Ideally I would say it’ll be cool if you can create more than 10 database. It’ll be fantastic if you can host multiple domains and add as many as sub-domains you want, that way you can start multiple websites without worrying about buying more web space.

Words of caution - Keep these things in mind :

1. Don’t get fooled by over-selling practices : There are thousands of web hosts, which over sell their packages. They’ll give you lucrative offers like Unlimited bandwidth etc. however, it’s a fact that no web host can offer you unlimited bandwidth and if at all they’ll do, you’ll have to shell out a hefty amount of money and I’m talking about hundreds of dollars per month.

2. Read the reviews : Just type in the name of the webhost name + review as the keywords on Google and you’ll get to know their ratings or will be able to read the reviews posted by various bloggers who are using them or used them in past.

3. Call their technical support : Many webhosts provide phone numbers or technical support numbers. Ensure that you call those numbers to see the amount of time you have to wait on the IVR, see how courteous the support is and if at all those number work or not. There are many resellers, who keep the websites up but when it comes to providing support, they really suck.

I’m confident that my niche blog will be hit and I’ll get huge traffic in coming months - what should I look for in a web host ?

Well, hats off to your confidence and here is the list of questions which you can ask from your web-host, normally they don’t talk about this stuff while pitching the package -

1. Amount of RAM allocated : How much amount of RAM (maximum) will be allocated to you in the shared hosting, there are many scripts which take high amount of RAM and thus it will be cool if you already have an idea that till which level you can go.

2. Is it possible to upgrade without making any changes from your side : Once your blog grows to a level when your current hosting plan is not sufficient then will it possible for you to change the plan or upgrade to VPS hosting without making any changes or not ? Try to clarify it before hand and if they’ll help you in moving or not, in case you are required to make the changes.

Can you recommend any blog hosting service ?

We are currently using MediaTemple and pretty satisfied with them. WordPress also suggests few webhosts and MediaTemple is one of them. Feel free to check out others and follow the above mentioned steps before signing up with any of them.