One of the most important aspects of putting together a killer website is finding the right kind of web hosting service to get your site published on the Internet. It can seem pretty overwhelming to try and choose one service when there seem to be billions online to choose from. If you’re new to owning a website you maybe wondering what you need to look for in a good web hosting service. Here’s a top 10 list of what you need to look for when choosing a service provider to host your site.

10. Customer Service

Service is an extremely important aspect to consider when finding a good Web hosting service. If you have any familiarity with any type of technology you are well aware that there are occasional hiccups and problems that pop up unexpectedly. When this occurs you need to be able to contact the Webhost company and get immediate troubleshooting help. You will want to connect with a service that offers 24 hour a day, seven days a week support. Make sure the company has a phone number and email address to contact them with, as well as a FAQ (frequently asked questions) page. Some companies have a forum where people can post questions and get answers as well.

9. Company Reliability

Reliability is an important quality to look for in any company, but especially a company that you are going to be paying to host your website. You should try and find a host that has some backup servers just in case the unexpected happens and the main servers go down. If your website is how you make money then you can’t afford for your site to be down, so this is very important.

8. Email

If you run your own business online, your website is how you make your money. You will need to be able to get in contact with your customers when they place orders or when problems pop up. This is why you need to make sure that part of the package you purchase from a Webhost has emails that contains the domain name of your website.

7. Shopping Cart or SSL

Buying items online these days can be pretty risky without a secure server. Your website should have a secured server so your customers can enter in their private information without worrying about having their credit card numbers or other information stolen and used without their permission.

6. Good Control Panel

Some web hosting service provider offer you a little hands on experience in managing a website by allowing you to have a control panel that will allow you to add, delete, or change email addresses and other content that is up on your site. This is definitely the type of service you want, as it can be a huge headache having to call tech support just to change a password or delete an email account.

5. Pricing

The price you have to pay a Webhost company will play a huge part in whether or not you decide to use that company’s services. It’s important that you take into consideration that you do end up getting what you pay for. So while price is an important factor keep in mind that cheaper web hosting services may not be able to meet the needs you have for your website.

4. Available Disk Space

There are a lot of scams being run online with service providers offering potential customers 500 MB of space for a certain price. Technically most websites are run using only 10 MB, which means you will probably never even use all that extra space. That means you actually loose money in this deal.

3. Speed

How fast your webpage actually loads will determine how successful your site will be. If a page doesn’t usually load up within a few seconds people will just close out the window and move on. It’s true, we humans are an impatient bunch, but what choice do you have? The speed in which your site loads depends largely on the type of servers the company uses.

2. Server Software

The type of software being used by the Webhost is very important. There are two main types of software, Unix and Windows NT. Some companies will only offer you one of these options, while others will offer you more. It’s best to find out which ones the company has before choosing them.

1. Connection to the Internet

This is probably the most important deciding factor in determining which company you should go with. There are a lot of different connection types that companies are offering these days. You will preferably want a company that offers a T3 connection as this allows for a lot more data to be transferred at a much faster speed.