I belonged to one of the tried and true web hosting companies for years, but recently I switched. Why? Well, first let me tell you what I think is important when choosing web hosting.

1. A decent price. Especially when you are starting out, if money is tight, you don’t want to spend a lot on web hosting. And you don’t need to. It is very reasonable to expect that for $10 or so a month, you will receive dependable, full-featured web hosting.

2. Reliability. Having your website never ‘go down’ is critical. You want a web hosting company that can guarantee uptime. It may be impossible to guarantee 100% reliability, but 99.9% … that would be good. In addition, you want to make sure that the company has back up server capability. Be sure to ask.

3. Multiple domain hosting. Right now all you may be thinking about is one website. But as your business grows, you want the web hosting company to be able to grow with you.

4. Adequate amount of storage space and bandwidth. Again, you need to think now about how you will grow in the future. Make sure the hosting company will be able to meet your future needs.

5. Access to logs and statistics. Knowing how your site is doing over time is critical to monitoring and adjusting your marketing campaigns. It is important to have access to statistics software and web logs.

6. Backups. It is important to always have a plan and system for backing up your files. The hosting company should also be doing a systematic backup of your files as well. Before committing to a hosting service find out what is backed up, i.e., files, server settings, databases, etc.

7. Fast, reliable, friendly customer support. When you have a problem you want the solution NOW. When visiting hosting companies, ask questions. See how quickly they get back to you. This is a good first step in determining what their customer service will be like in the future.

So, given those 7 criteria, I chose D9 hosting because they met all of these important factors and more.

When first starting out, I didn’t understand all of the ins-and-outs of hosting, and they answered every question I had within an hour, if not within minutes of my emailing. Their answers were always clear and accurate and they were almost always answered by the owners of the company Dan and Paula themselves! It didn’t seem to matter what time of day it was, they were there to give friendly support when I needed it!

I have had to transfer some of my sites from other hosting companies and they did this seamlessly and it was FREE! I truly feel when I deal with Dan and Paula that they care about me and my internet business personally. Isn’t THAT refreshing!

If you are just starting out, or are thinking of changing hosting companies, I highly recommend D9 Hosting. I know that my previous hosting company didn’t come even close to providing the service that D9 provides.

If you click on the coupon code in the right-hand corner on the top of this blog page, they provide a 10% discount on their already very low rate.

-Norene