expanded a bit. The same thing goes for bandwidth, or transfer. You want to secure enough space and bandwidth now so that you do not have to switch hosts, or pay a premium for extra services, in the future.

On the topic of bandwidth and storage space, there is an important financial lesson I’d like to impart. Although you want to make sure you have enough of both for the foreseeable future, you don’t want to pay for lots and lots of bandwidth and storage space, month after month, that you will never actually use. For instance, there are many companies out there who are now offering 5+ GB of space and perhaps 100 GB of bandwidth from $7 - $10 a month. This may seem like a pretty good deal. However, if you are only going to use perhaps 100 MB of space, and 10 GB of transfer, then you are wasting money! You can find a nice 500MB / 20GB plan for under $5 per month. This is where planning really comes into play; know how much space and bandwidth you will need before you go looking for a host.

Many companies, big and small, are offering 24/7 technical and customer support these days. Be very weary of these claims. Most companies that claim 24/7 support don’t really live up to expectations. In addition, a 1-800 number does not guarantee that someone will actually answer you phone call, or even be helpful. Look for a company that has a good, honest support structure set up with a variety of support options: support tickets, live support chat, e-mail support, and perhaps phone support as well. My own web company, for instance, has everything but phone support. We are still capable of answering inquiries within minutes. If you are considering a particular web host, the best thing you can do to evaluate their support is simply send them an e-mail or open a support ticket and see how long it takes them to respond to your inquiry. If it takes more than 24 hours, that’s probably a bad sign.

In order to substantiate the credibility of your potential web company, I suggest looking for some type of customer testimonials on their webpage. If they list the customer’s website or e-mail address, go the extra step and contact at least one of the customers. They will be able to confirm that they are real customers and let you know about their experiences with the given company. If they have no testimonials, or the testimonial listings do not contain a means of contacting the customers, do a search on the company using a big search engine like Google and Yahoo!. Look for forums and other webpages that may contain customer feedback about your company. Many times, customers that have either had a very bad or very good experience with a company will go onto at least one webmaster forum and tell others about their experience. Looking up these comments is a good way to get a third-party assessment of a particular company.

If you follow these bits of advice I am certain you will find a reliable, affordable company that is right for your website. If nothing else, you could give my company (SitePhase) a look and compare it to other companies offering similar plans. Whatever company you decide to go with, I wish you the best of luck!
Bradley co-owns the web hosting company SitePhase. SitePhase offers affordable and reliable shared and reseller web hosting services. Plans start at just $2.95/ month and include MySQL, PHP, CGI, 24/7 support and more.

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