There’s no denying that web-hosting has undergone a tremendous evolution ever since the inception of the World Wide Web in the early 90s. So earth-shattering and groundbreaking is this unprecedented advancement, that the average web site owner has an array of cheap web-hosting services at his disposal to choose from.

The choices are so many that it is easy to get overwhelmed and confused by the sheer number of options in the market. And this is particularly the case for a web hosting beginner with little or no experience in this dicey subject.

With literally thousands of hosting companies competing for our attention, how can a person who is just starting with their online presence sort the good from the bad? Before we look into this, let’s first glance over 3 of the top web hosts and see their major features.

1. Siteground

One of the premier business email web-hosting companies that you can come across is also specially recommended by WordPress – one of the largest content management systems of our time. Siteground, being a leading and pioneering entrant in the hosting business, is also known for its round-the-clock expert support and an incredibly outstanding 99% up time.

2. InMotion

InMotion is one of the few web hosting services that offer unlimited bandwidth coupled with equally unlimited disk space. For this reason, you can host as many WordPress sites on one hosting account as you wish.

3. Hostgator

Hostgator is characterized by its extraordinary easy-to-use cPanel and a bonus Weebly site builder. If anything, this is one of the most recommended web hosts for a beginner looking to set up their first professional site. It is also relatively cheaper compared to the two and gives an unbeatable 100% off the first month of service.

For newbies and just seasoned beginners, at this juncture, it’s obvious that you might be wondering how we came up with this list, and how you can compile yours in the future in need be. Well, here you go.

Essential Features to Consider When Looking for a Web Host

1. The Amount of Storage on Offer

Depending on your personal preference and the nature of your future site, this ought to be one of the first items on your list, particularly if you’re looking for future scalability.

As much as some sites will boast of ‘unlimited storage’ this ‘unlimited’ is often capped at a few gigabytes of their ‘normal site usage’ fine print. Well, if you’re only looking to develop a blog, small or medium sized site, this ought to be more than enough. However, if you’re looking at some as fully fledged as an online store, portal or multimedia website, you should pay more attention at exactly how much storage you’ll be paying for at what rates.

2. Tech Support and their Uptime Reputation

It is obvious that no one would wish to have a site that is barely live, loads slowly and keeps stuttering/freezing from time to time. Therefore, your ideal web host ought to be with a reputation of an almost zero downtime and stellar customer and tech support.

Ideally, the tech support team of your prospective host should be reachable 24 hours a day either via a ticketing system or voice call. And if it is the former, the response time should be in the span of a couple of minutes.

3. Number of Subdomains and Domains Allowed

There is an unwritten rule in the hosting world that ‘ a first site always begets another.’ As soon as you have one website up-and-running, a second, third or even a fourth one will soon crop up. And it is not only cumbersome but also expensive to manage separate hosting accounts for each independent site that you will build. And that’s why it important to make sure that your chosen web hosting platform allows a limited number of multiple domains per subscription.

4. Easy-Install and Framework Support

Your prospective web hosts should be compatible with the kind of framework that you hope to adopt in your new site. If you’re planning on using a CMS such as WordPress, for instance, it would be nice if the host also offers a super easy way for you to install this. A good example is the trademark ‘one-click WP install.’ The same applies to the type of server-side languages (Ruby on Rails, PHP, Django, etc.) supported by the web host.

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