I started my first website August 2005. Since then one of my main challenges have been finding a web hosting with good customer service and fair prices.

It can be very frustrating when you call your provider to add an option and they charge you couple times the amount, and you dont get the serrvice for over a week. It only ads to frustration when you have to spend so many of your cellphone minutes (an hour each time) talking to customer service personell only to find out they can’t or are not going to help you.

That being said, I decided to write this to show you the path to finding a good webhosting. Following are the points you need to know:

• IPOWER WEB has awful customer service (personal experience).
• Before signing up with any provider go to Web Hosting Jury and read the reviews.
• You can even use Web Hosting Jury to find the highest rated or best reviewed web hosting providers

Every web hosting provider will give you very large number of options and services included in your account. You need to ask them the following questions to see if they have the services you NEED. These services are the type that you don’t think of when signing up, however later you might have to add them to your service for a high price. Those questions are:

• How many databases you can have. It’s good to have at least 3 for every domain hosted on your account.
• Whether you have AWstats included or not. Statistic information is what helps you improve your website. AWstats is free for the web providers. I didn’t ask this question and I have to pay additional $50 (almost $50) a year for AWStats right not.
• How many MySQL connections can you have at any given time. (25 and above is a pretty good number)
• If you are looking to add more domains to your account later, you need to ask whether there is a fee for ADD-ON domains. Sometimes they charge as much as $20 a year per add-on domain

That’s it for now. But keep in mind the cheapest is not always the best option neither is the most expensive ones. Customer service makes a huge difference too. A good customer service can fix all problems in a not so good service in a short time. But nothing replaces your website being down for 2 days (and they will not reimburse you for any damages caused by their mistakes except the hosting account money you supposedly paid for those days.)