In order to run a successful blog, you are going to have work with a decent hosting partner. You may not get a whole lot of traffic when you are starting but if you are dedicated, your website will grow over time. Many folks assume that going with the cheapest hosting partner possible is not a bad idea, especially when they are just starting. The trouble is there are many lousy web hosts around. Their bad service can kill your business or set it back dramatically.

Choosing a web host is very similar to finding someone to marry. I can tell you from experience that moving large blogs from one host to another is not fun and can have short-term negative effects on your rankings. Paying attention to these 7 factors could help you choose the right web hosting partner:

• features: this should go without saying. If your website runs a certain version of PHP and MySQL, you would want to work with a host that supports those. You also want to make sure you get enough monthly bandwidth and storage with your hosting plan. Running a website is more than just installing WordPress. Security and business features matter too.
• track record: no matter how great an offer looks on paper, you should take time to research your web hosting partner to make sure you choose the right one for your business. A company with a bad track record is not worth dealing with.
• support: in the past few years, I have worked with a number of web hosting companies. Many of them promise great support but do not offer anything close to it.  A web host that hires inexperienced tech support members is worth ignoring too. When it comes to hosting, you should try to work with a company that shows it cares.
• add-on services: our past web host was a great company. But it was awful when it came to offering services that could help businesses. For instance, they did not provide server monitoring and offsite backup. Not offering those services was a huge turn off for our team. Always ask the right questions from your hosting partner before parting ways with your money.
• plan flexibility: I don’t know about you but I do not like to pay more than I have to for the services I sign up for. As your blog grows, you may have to pay more for your hosting needs. Working with a company that offers only a couple of plans can be problematic. In those cases, you could end up being forced to move to a plan that offers much more than you need, costing you a fortune in the process.
• control: just because a web host is charging a considerable amount of money for its service does not mean it gives its customers total control. You wouldn’t expect to get too much control when you are paying $5 a month for your plan. Things should be different if you are a dedicated server customer.
• contracts: always take time to find out about what’s covered in your contract with your hosting partner. Does your partner offer service guarantees? Can you get out of your contract ahead of time and get a refund for unused period on your contract? It is always better to be informed than sorry when dealing with web hosting companies.

Choosing a great web host takes a lot of time and effort. Paying attention to the above factors should help you avoid making costly mistakes. Have you got any suggestions on how to find a great web host? Please share them below.

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Choosing the right web host for your blog is a big step. Go with the wrong web host, and you are going to regret your move for a very long time. I have been lucky with my web hosts. DreamHost has had its up and downs, but it has one of the best support teams around, making it easy to forgive some of its shortcomings. VPS.net has an amazing reputation and backs it all up with its service. Many new bloggers tend to go with the first web host they find online. Just because a company has a popular brand or can create commercials with half naked ladies does not mean they can keep your website up and running 24/7. Doing your research beforehand goes a long away towards helping you pick a host that won’t put your business in trouble in the long run.

You should not cut any corners when picking a web host. It does not matter what a company has done in the past couple of months. You should look at web hosts’ track records over the long run to find out how they treat their customers, what type of service they offer, and whether they are only into nickeling and diming their customers. Here are 5 ways you can go about doing your research:

• check Twitter: Twitter is one of the best places to find out about issues you may have to deal with a web host. Just search the name of the web host you are planning to work with to see whether someone’s complaining and how your future partner is handling those complaints. If your web host does not have a Twitter account, that is not a good sign.
• search for complaints: there are plenty of complaint sites that are filled with people who are sharing their bad experiences with the world. Going through these websites can give you an idea whether your hosting candidates are worth working with.
• don’t forget negative keywords: works such as “scam” and “sucks” are great wild-cards to use on Google and Bing to figure out who’s been complaining about the web hosts you are planning to work with. Not all these “attack pieces” are accurate but they are worth studying.
• be annoying with customer service: you want to know how a web host will treat you once you pay up? Be somewhat annoying with its customer service. Don’t insult or be mean . At the same time, make sure you ask for as many things as possible from the company’s representatives to gauge their reaction. If they are not willing to help out a potential customer, will they help you once you are a customer?
• don’t forget forums: forums are another great source of information about web hosts. You should check official forums (support forums for the company you want to work with) as well as web hosting industry forums. Some companies do keep their forums closed to the public. You may still be able to reach the appropriate threads in those forums using search engines.

Choosing a web host is a big decision for your blog. While you may want to get started with your blog as soon as possible, going with a web host you are not absolutely confident about will come back to bite you in the end. That’s a guarantee.

A lot of bloggers underestimate that lie in their path to blogging stardom. You can spend hours creating killer content for your blog, but if you do not choose the right web host for your blog, there is a good chance your blog could be down when your visitors come looking for information. Let me tell you that nothing turns me off than going to a website that is too slow or completely down. Many bloggers get started with free hosting services or cheap shared hosting. In reality, you should always plan on purchasing a premium web hosting service to your blog once you have hit 5-10K unique visitors per month. The last thing you want to do is negate your blog’s momentum by going with one of those cheap web hosts.

I personally started my blogs on one of those shared hosting services. I was paying $4 a month for my hosting and was happy with the service. But once I started pulling 15K a month, I realized my site was going down on a consistent basis. At first I thought it was a software issue. I got rid of most of my plug-ins and adopted lighter themes. I even stopped going overboard with images. But nothing worked. Finally, I realized the problem was my hosting and not my website. That’s why I switched to Dreamhost PS. Dreamhost PS is web hosting on demand. In essence, you can decide how much you want to pay every month and how much resources you want use on a monthly basis. So you can start cheap and add more resources as soon as you blog goes viral. That way you don’t end up spending $500 a month right away with your own dedicated service.  Don’t get me wrong. If you have a website that gets 1M hits a month, it’s better to go with private hosting, but you can buy a lot of time with an on-demand web hosting service such as Dreamhost PS.

What I love about Dreamhost PS is that it lets me know exactly how much memory and CPU power I am using on a daily basis, allowing me to easily figure out how much money I need to invest in my hosting. I can also use MySQL PS to get better performance from my DBs as well. Finally, Dreamhost PS lets me make a lot of changes to my PHP and Apache configuration that I couldn’t with my shared hosting account.

Should you go with Dreamhost PS?

I have worked with 4 other web hosts, and the only one that I can truly recommend is Dreamhost PS. It’s my current web host, and it has been for a while. The support that you get from the folks behind Dreamhost is superb, and the service is reliable. Best of all, you get a lot of discounts and goodies with each hosting account that makes going with Dreamhost a no-brainer. Are there better hosts out there? I can’t tell as I haven’t had to search for one in years.