When it comes to running my own design business, I understand the importance of keeping clients happy during every aspect of the contract. This doesn’t just limit to the design itself, it also has a lot to do when some form of web hosting is involved.
I’ll admit, a lot of my clients are blog related and use free services such as blogspot and wordpress. The rest of them are actual domain owners and wanted their site moved to where they’d have more control over things, instead of just having it as a redirect to their free account. I’m not going to set them up on a cheap server with banner ads. I’m going to make sure to work within their budget and handle everything. Typically I’ll put them on my server because I know my servers and know what they’re capable of doing. Sometimes I’ll use an outside source depending on the scale of the website as well. Those who have larger accounts, I’ll either place them on their on VPS or maybe a larger shared website hosting plan.
There are many different kinds of webhosting available to you. Using resources to look up webhosting information is always going to be the best possible thing for you to do. You want to know where your money is going, you want to know what you’re getting for your money. Don’t consider purchasing someone’s hosting who’s known as a reseller. They only spend about $10-$12 a month on their webhosting and if they’re giving away about $20-$30 worth of webhosting to other users, all you’re doing is providing them with their own free webhosting and maybe some crazy addiction that they haven’t made public yet.
Look into as much information as you possibly can. Learn the difference between shared hosting, reseller hosting, VPS and dedicated hosting. From there you’ll need to compare plans. I’ll tell you from the get-go that if you’re interested in spending $10 a month do not go with a company that’s offering you 80gb of disk space and 3,000GB of bandwidth. You’ll never use those kinds of resources and the server is seriously being oversold. A plan in the $10 range should only give you about 500-700mb and 10-15GB of bandwidth. These are the people who know what they’re doing. Pay close attention, don’t base it on where everyone seems to be flocking to. Many companies have crashed and burned because of a flock like this.