There is a lot of talk out there about which is the “Best Web
Hosting” company.
With such a highly contentious subject (since being the “best” means
more
customers - and implicitly more money), there are a lot of
“authoritative sources”
out there. One authoritative (without quotes!) source would be
Netcraft, but
then again, their statistics are somewhat limited in this space - it is
nice
to know who were the fastest or who had the smallest downtime, but this
doesn’t
tell me anything about pricing, customer support and other services
(for example
DDoS resistance/mitigation can be quite important these days!).
So, how to choose? I have just two words - very carefully. Have a clear
goal in
mind (ie. “I want a CMS” or “I want a blog”) and try not to
overestimate your
needs (especially if it is a personal project). The most important
thing is to
own a domain (yeah, I known, look who’s talking) - which you can
redirect later
on if you decide to move providers. I’m a great fan of niche/dedicate
hosting
(like Blogger,
Wordpress, or why not -
Squarespace). Given their specialization
they can deliver their core competency very efficiently and securely
and very
often free of for a low cost. The second best thing would be a
(managed) VPS
and only in the last instance would I consider shared hosting.
Full disclosure: this is a paid review from ReviewMe. Under the terms of the understanding I was not obligated to skew my viewpoint in any way (ie. only post positive facts).