Reliable Web Hosting

For any Internet based business where you have quite a few web sites it is very wise to use more than one web hosting company. There are 2 main reasons for this:

1. All you eggs aren’t in one basket. If one of your web hosts suffers a major outage then only the sites hosted with that web hosting company are offline, meaning all your other sites are still generating traffic and revenue.

2. Unique IPs (Internet Protocol address). If you use shared hosting and you stick with one web host, all your sites normally run from the same IP address. This can affect how sites like Google index the sites you host on that same IP address, so I always think it’s better to host groups of sites across different IP addresses. You can also get valid back links between your own sites this way as well.

Personally, I prefer to use hosting companies that use CPANEL web hosting. CPANEL hosting is a very powerful interface that allows you to effortlessly maintain and configure you site. You can do “one click installations” of many of the top applications like WordPress, plus it provides the ability manage and backup your files.

This is the list of hosting companies that I use today and I genuinely have accounts with all of them:

Blue Host

This is currently my favourite web hosting company and just wins over Hostgator because of the additional bandwidth and disk space you get. You also get additional features in the CPANEL and free vouchers for Google and Yahoo advertising. Blue Host have won most major awards in 2008 and I am extremely happy with them. Packages work out between $6.95 and $9.95 per month depending on how much you want to pay in advance (i.e. quarterly right up 24 months in advance).

Hostgator

Hostgator is a superb web hosting company in terms of value for money and support. They are also one of the most popular. Unlimited domain packages are available for around $7.95 a month and for me they come in at a very close second. If you aren’t going to use the additional features of Blue Host then Hostgator’s pay monthly package may work out slightly cheaper for you.

Micfo

I’ve been with Micfo for around 7 years and I’ve found them to be one of the best hosting companies for re-seller hosting as you can host unlimited domains. By request, they will give access to WHM (Web Host Manager) which allows you create your own branded web hosting packages for either selling to your customers, or for managing your own web sites independently of each other. Several times they have offered me amazing pay up front packages that works out in real terms at about $3.95 a month for unlimited hosting.

I will update this page if I ever sign to a new web hosting company that I am happy to recommend.