Selecting a reliable web hosting company is imperative to a successful website. Visitors to your website don’t “see” behind the scenes. If your site is down, in your customers mind it reflects on you, not your web hosting service provider. Your website is the first impression of your company for many of your customers. If your site is down, slow and unreliable, that reflects poorly on your company and can impact your company’s reputation.

If you have an unreliable web hosting service provider, the downtime will cost you more than your reputation, it will impact your bottom line. If a customer can’t get to your site, they can’t purchase your product/service, thereby costing you revenue. In addition, if your web hosting service provider loses your data, you have to commit your own resources to re-establishing your site, as well as the business you are losing while you work to get your site back on the web.

When selecting your web hosting service provider, make sure they have at least a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Even with such a high uptime percentage, you need to be aware that 99.9% still allows a host to be down for several hours a month. Some downtime is unavoidable.
Make sure you find out if the web host has a Service Level Agreement and will they credit you for downtime. If they offer downtime credit, is it a billing credit or a free extension of your hosting contract?

Researching a web hosting service provider is very important. You need to determine how long they have been in business and what their record in the industry is. What are current and former customers saying about them? What is the industry saying about them? What awards have they earned?

It is also important to determine how responsive the web hosting provider will be if you encounter a problem. Do they have 24/7 phone support? Do they have online chat? Do they have email support? You should test all of the support methods offered and see how long it takes the web hosting provider to respond to your inquiry and how thorough the response is.