Evaluating Web Hosting Plans

Deciding What Your Needs Are

The first step in choosing any hosting plan is to determine what your needs are. FindMyHosting offers a lot of help in this area. You can use the Search Guides in the Web Resources section, or just click on any search option on either the easy or advanced search pages. This will bring up an instant help box that will give you some advice on what features are needed.

Web hosting plans can run from very cheap (a few dollars a month) through to fairly expensive (hundreds of dollars a month). If you have a simple personal site then paying hundreds of dollars a month would be a big waste of your money. If plan to create a ecommerce driven online presence running as a business on the web, then paying a few dollars a month for hosting would leave you frustrated and without many of the features you need.

Once you have a rough idea of what your needs in a hosting plan are, you are ready to search for plans that meet your needs.

Tip - Be aware of plans that claim to offer "unlimited" bandwidth. There is no such thing as "unlimited" anything, especially bandwidth. Plans that state "unlimited" are banking on the fact that you won't use too much bandwidth. If you do then the plan will quickly become unlimited. In FindMyHosting plans that quote unlimited are shown as "Not Defined"

Finding and Comparing Web Hosting Plans

There are many web hosting providers in the market place today, there are a lot of ways to find hosting plans, so many that it can become very confusing.

If you have visited some of the many web hosting directories then you will have been faced with a mountain of ads, spotlights, recommended hosts, top 25 hosts etc. These don't help you much because hosting companies pay to be listed in this way. It's not objective, it's all paid advertising pretending to be a valuable resource.

If you already know somebody with a web site - then ask them who their web host is. Word of mouth and personal recommendation is an excellent way to find a web host.

Perhaps you would feel comfortable dealing with somebody based locally. You can use the advanced search tool in FindMyHosting to search for web hosting companies based in your area.

FindMyHosting is a different kind of web hosting directory. We simply list plans that match your needs, lowest price first and provide hosting companies with a platform to differentiate and convince you that their plan is the right choice. We don't recommend plans and we certainly do not allow any host to pay for any unfair advantage. With FindMyHosting you are in control and you know that you can make an objective an educated choice.

Using FindMyHosting

FindMyHosting puts a wealth of information at your fingertips to allow you to make good choices. FindMyHosting also offers each host a way to compete for your business. Every host in FindMyHosting has exactly the same opportunity to compete for your hosting dollar, there are no behind the scenes paid advantages.

The first step in using FindMyHosting is to start a search using either the easy or advanced search, or using one of the search guides. This will list web hosting plans that match your search, always listed lowest price first.

The next step is to look at plans in more detail. Click on any host listed in the search results to review them in more detail. All the information you see when viewing a plan in detail is provided by the host. Some points to consider :

• What does their home page look like ? - Is it professional ?
  
• What about any example sites - how many are listed and how professional are those sites
• Are any reviews listed? - How do they read?
  
• Is the Host a Hosting Assured member?, which means they have committed to abide by a customer code of ethics
  
• What is the hosts customer rating score? - How relevant is it (i.e how many reviews have been made) - Look at the reviews in detail to see what the responses to the rating questionnaire have been.
  
• How does this plan compare to others?

To compare plans - store upto 4 plans in your stored plans list. This allows you to look at plans side by side. You may find that for a few extra dollars you get a better mix of features.

After you have purchased a hosting plan, come back and rate the hosting company so that you can help other people looking for hosting. Your experience is valuable.