So you're an individual about to start a site, or a small business or nonprofit with a very tiny budget for website development. You've found a volunteer or an affordable professional to handle the development work, and now you're looking to find a place to host your site. How do you find the right company?
As a budget website hosting customer, you're in a tough position. There are literally thousands of companies selling website hosting aimed at those with a low budget, which makes it very, very difficult to choose between them. Often, the ones ranked highest in Google (the only ones you'd ever see if you're using search engines to do your research) are the ones that spend the most money on advertising and marketing...and the least money on their hardware infrastructure or support.
It's a catch-22. A company offering budget website hosting can either focus on their marketing or their products and service, but not both...they simply wouldn't make a profit if they did. So they can either do both and move into the medium-budget website hosting market, or they can remain in the budget market and choose one or the other. Since the search engines are flooded with website hosting companies and sites, this means that it's impossible for a budget host to advertise affordably on a search engine if they're committed to maintaining their resources. I don't know about you, but I'd definitely rather have an organization that puts its money into my servers and my support staff than one that chooses to fund advertising for new customers instead.
So how do you find a good website host if they can't advertise or get ranked in Google? By doing what you're doing now...reading recommendations. User reviews and word-of-mouth advertising remains the best way to find a reliable host that cares more about their product and reputation than about marketing their services. So ask around. Find other nonprofits with websites, and find out if they're happy with their hosts. If an organization provides free website hosting for nonprofits, and if the organizations they host are happy with their services, you may have found a winner. If organizations are unhappy with a particular company, mark them down as a place to avoid. Eventually, settle on an organization that provides the right price with a fairly steady record of satisfied customers.
If you're curious, I outlined my own recommendation for a budget website hosting company here: Dave's HostPC Review. They're the guys hosting my site as I write this, and are still the ones choose when I'm asked to recommend a hosting solution to clients or friends.
In the end, your choice of a website hosting company will directly reflect the features your online presence can offer, how reliable your website is, and how well it can be used by your constituents. It's definitely worth it to take the time and do it right.
