Affordable web hosting is not only defined by the monetary cost, but also by the opportunity cost and the time you’ll spend getting a web hosting company that doesn’t do what you need. You’ll see at the end of this article who I use and here are a few of the things I evaluate when considering a web hosting company to go with.

Most hosting companies offer most space than you could probably ever use unless you’re hosting some serious video content. Several web hosting companies now offer “unlimited” space. Obviously trying to test the upper limits of this supposed “unlimited” disk space would require some serious uploading and bandwidth. Not enough disk space will most likely be the least of your worries, even if you are hosting extensive video content.

Another component that may influence your decision on what web hosting company to go with is the amount of bandwidth that they will allocate for you. If you stream a lot of video or people are downloading large files from your web server, this may be a problem. However, if you consider that most web hosts give you several terabytes of bandwidth, this shouldn’t be an issue.

Customer support is only important when you need it. So, if you consider yourself a techie to the point you’d be able to take care of your own server or account and things that go along with it, you may not need support. However, if you do need support, you’ll want to setup with a company that has great support. You’ll be glad you did.

Having a good control panel that is easy to navigate through and provides easy management options is vital. It’s one thing if you know your way around at the command line of a terminal connecting you to your server, but even then the likelihood of messing something up increases. A good control panel has all of the common options easily accessible and the less common options available as well.

Take advantage of the free domain name most affordable web hosting companies will give you. They’ll use this domain name as the account name typically. You don’t have to use a free domain name. If you have one registered already, you can use that as the account identifier. Keep in mind that most of these affordable web hosts will allow you to have several domains per account, each pointing to their own directory. With this, you can solicit some business and host other websites on your own server. If you do this for a few dollars per month, you’ll be able to count this against your overall cost. Just an idea.

Installing web based software is not necessarily difficult, but there are enough things that require manual intervention that having a good software installer built into the web host is very convenient and makes the process of installing software easy. These software installation scripts are usually accessible through the cpanel. You can usually install any number of software packages including blogs, content management systems, ecommerce storefronts, bulletin board systems or forums, and even things like an email autoresponder system. Your website doesn’t have to have only one of these, you can install these into their own directories as well and interlink them from your main navigation bar.

If you’re doing anything online to either generate income or even manage content that you want responsibility for, hosting your own website is a must. You can usually work with a few different web hosts to find the one that you like the most. There will typically be a 30 to 60 day money back guarantee which will enable you to try a couple of them.