Everyone who owns a website wants to find inexpensive and yet reliable website hosts. However, this proves to be not an easy task. Website hosts with lots of features and great support often prove to be very hard to find and/or very expensive. An unfortunate state of fact is that usually there's no way to verify the claims of the targeted website hosts.

Here's a list of interesting questions: Is there such a thing as "inexpensive reliable website hosts"? Is there a real difference between website hosts? Are there any inexpensive website hosts providing what they promise? Is it hard to find them?

Now that we asked ourselves those questions, I'm happy to announce you that I do know the answers to those questions. And here they are in the right order: Yes! Yes! Yes! No; if you know how to look for them!

So all you need is a method to find them.

1. Finding inexpensive website hosts

2. Verifying that they indeed provide good service or -- to put it another way -- collect opinions from former and current customers

1. Finding inexpensive website hosts

This first problem is rather easy to solve. By using directories that list website hosts or even by using regular search engines, you can find many companies that provide inexpensive web hosting.

Write on a piece of paper exactly what you need from your ideal web hosts:

Support - should be fast and toll free. God knows what problems you will have, and you will need every bit of help you can get!

Availability - The servers should be up and running at least 99.5% of time. You don't want your visitors to find your website "closed".

Bandwidth - Although most websites don't need more than 1 GB of bandwidth, each situation is different. Carefully estimate how much bandwidth you need and select the website hosts that provide it.

Space - Usually offers start at well over 10 Mbytes of space. If you're just starting, then your site will have - most likely - under 1 Mbyte. Keep in mind that it might grow as you add more pages. Consider the fact that 1 page usually has under 50 Kbytes even if it's filled with information (more if lots of graphics are included). So, with a 1 Mbyte account you would be able to host about 20 pages. Is this enough for you? I don't know, but most websites don't need much more than that.

Scripts - Almost all the website hosts, including the "inexpensive" ones, offer Perl and PHP. Why settle for less?

Secure ordering - you might need this feature if you want to setup a store without using third party services. If your website isn't a store, you don't really need this feature.

Anything else - Yes, look for anything else that you might need. :-)

OK... After you've done this list of needs, go to www.webhostingtalk.com (hosts the best forums about web hosting on the Net), register (don't worry, it's free) and find the "web hosting requests" forum. You may ask there for what you need and wait for the offers. Don't forget to ask for a price quote or even post the maximum price that you're ready to pay. However, I no longer recommend this method. It seems that mostly the newcomers bother to advertise their services thereand- unfortunatrly - they're not trustworthy.

I'd recommend to use the search engines to come up with a list of website hosts that have what you're looking for.

2. Collecting opinions from former and current customers

This is the real power that WebHostingTalk possesses. So go to www.webhostingtalk.com, click the "Search" button and then search for the name of each company in your list. It will take some time, but most likely you will find out what other people think about each of those website hosts. Based on your findings, you will be able to decide what's best for you.

Then again, if the results are inconclusive, start new threads asking for opinions those website hosts. Take care not to spam the forum. Limit yourself to lets say, 3 website hosts. Post a question asking for opinions about the first company in your list. Then wait for the answers. After the thread "gets old", post the question about the second company. And so on.

Also, some of the website hosts run their own forums to allow their customers to interract with each other. You can find good info about their service in such forums.

Here's a short list with some of the website hosts with a good reputation at WebHostingTalk. I hope it helps:

Hostgator (they've been hosting my sites for 4+ years now)
DownTownHost

Pair
Futurequest
Dathorn
Httpme
Dixiesys
Unitedhosting
Icdsoft
Hostingmatters
Sprintserve.net

Now I bet this sounds almost too easy! Fortunately it is. However, it's time consuming. It took me about 10 hours to come up with this list. You have to read quite a few opinions to be able to decide which of the myriad of website hosts is good and which isn't.

Now it's all up to you, and all I can do is wish you success! And good luck!

Ah! Don't expect to find only positive reviews about any company. Look for website hosts which most users are satisfied with; keep in mind that upset customers are up to 9 times faster to complain than happy customers are to praise!

A note: This article was the spark that lead to the creation of my other website, whreviews.com, which is a much more complete web hosting shopping guide. I strongly suggest you visit it if you want to increase you chances of finding a good host even further.

Related articles:

How to advertise your website

Starting a web hosting company