At which specifications to look before choosing shared hosting

Which specifications are important to compare when choosing a shared plan? I do not ask for ads this time. Thanks!

 

look for 24/7 support and uptime then cost and features and time in business. Also have ability to move easily from web hosting account to servers for those with larger sites or sites that are growing

 

1) QUALITY
A) Uptime (MOST important)
Nothing else matters if no one can visit your site
B) Support
Unless you are a computer guru, you will go nowhere without support
C) SSL
Without SSL Chrome and other browsers will BLOCK your site
D) Applications
Are the applications you need available?
E) Site transfer
Do you need to transfer an existing site?
F) Activation
Do you need to wait, or is it immediate upon payment?

2) QUANTITY
A) Speed
Slow servers mean lost visitors
B) Storage
Your site will choke when storage is limited
C) Bandwidth
Insufficient bandwidth means blocked visitors

3) PRICE
A) Money back guarantee
Not really important because of all the no-pay clauses in them
B) SSL
Most sites do not need pay-to-play, so is FREE available?
C) Payment types
Is your payment type available?
D) Cost (probably the LEAST important)
If you cannot get what you need, what difference does it make?

There a many more things to consider depending on exactly what you need. However, that will winnow out most hosting issues.

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I recently moved my site from a major hosting company to a small lesser known company. It is still too early to know whether I chose the best hosting company, but I was FORCED to do something, else face bankruptcy.

My issue was SSL. At my old hosting provider the ONLY way I could get SSL that allowed me to view my own site was to spend $175 per year for LetsEncrypt SSL. I was NOT allowed to add LetsEncrypt myself. And LetsEncrypt is the only SSL that I know about that would allow ME to visit MY OWN site!

My new hosting company offers LetsEncrypt for FREE and AUTOMATICALLY updates LetsEncrypt every 90 days. Most, but not all, hosting providers either offer LetsEncrypt for free or allow you to add it yourself.

After weeks of investigation I finally pulled the plug and switched. So far so good.

The best part so far is that my cost for 3 years was UNDER $200, while getting exactly the same things that I needed from my old hosting company would have cost me about $900. In 3 years when I renew, my cost will double with the new provider, but will still be LESS than HALF of what the old provider is asking for.

So, what did I get?

Slightly more downtime, 60 minutes per month versus 30 minutes per month. Not real important for a site that gets a few hundred visits per day.

Faster speed, around 300ms versus 550ms. Again not a big issue, but faster is better.

More payment types which is important to me. Old hoster no longer accepts checks, so I would have been forced to move anyway by the end of the year. New hoster activated service without even waiting for my check to clear, although that was not expected.

New hosting company is a small privately owned company having been in business for well over a decade with the same owners today as when it was started. Just the fact that they have been in business for that long WITHOUT a change in ownership is a BIG PLUS in my book. Small companies do not continue to exist by ignoring their customers.

Old hosting company was a megagiant running roughshod over the peons like me.

And finally, NO, I am NOT going to name these companies at this time as it is simply TOO EARLY to know whether my initial experience will hold water down the road.

 

If I was one to buy I would review:
- The provider's business record and does it oversell its Shared Hosting services by offering "unlimited". Offering "unlimited" is obviously a fraud.
- I would go for SSD based web hosting service
- I would make sure that the provider uses Cloud computing infrastructure to deliver Shared Hosting, not standalone servers.

 

If the email service is important for you, i would suggest you to ask them for some IP's and test them in spamhaus and other blacklists. I have seen many people complaint about it after signing up but stuck in the contract so it's better to determine IP reputation before signing up.

 

I would normally look for in below order:
Support (Technical support is very important), Value for Price (you will get what you pay for), Uptime, Reliability!
I would highly recommend cenmax.in for any sort of PHP/mySQL hosting needs. Easy admin functionality, billing etc. Their pricing is quite cheap.