So you’ve decided to go for a cheap web host. The first thing you must remember is that it isn’t necessarily the higher priced websites that offer better services.

So don’t give in to just anything. In fact, these days with the increasing number of people who want to host their own website, web hosting is becoming increasingly cheaper. With enough research, you can easily find the one that’s perfect for you!

1. First of all, make sure they offer you a website design builder – especially if you’re a beginner and don’t know the basics. And also make sure they help you with setting up your website to your satisfaction.

2. Make sure you check site reviews first.

3. Remember this: even though cheap web hosts that provide good service are not that rare, there are lots of hosts that offer cheap rates just to attract more customers, but don’t provide good service, or are just scams. Assess to make sure you really are getting everything they are promising. Try to look beyond their advertisements.

4. Make sure to check their customer support. A lot of them offer 24/7 phone support, which might just turn out to be a lie. To check this, call the company at an unearthly hour and see what their response is. If their response is satisfactory, then you know that their customer-support is strong.

5. It isn’t that important that you get FTP, PHP, Perl, SSI, .htaccess, telnet, SSH, MySQL, and crontabs – if you don’t know what it is; chances are you won’t need it. But also check that the features that you will require are being offered.

6. Don’t get fooled by advertisements that proclaim unlimited bandwidth. Check to make sure there are no sub-clauses that limit your disk space or your bandwidth. You might not need that much bandwidth, but you must make sure that you get enough for you site to function properly now, and in the future. At the same time, make sure you’re not buying more than you need.

7. Test the speed of the network by clicking start > run > type in "command" enter, and then type "ping hostdomainname.com". Wait for it to finish, and look for the average ping. The lower the number, the better. Any number below 80 is good, any number above 100 is bad, unless the host is based in another country.

8. Understand the different kinds of hosting – if it suits your requirements, you might want to go in for either shared, or dedicated hosting.

9. It will help to know what kind of server you need to use – for most applications, Linux servers are the better option, but if you have to write or use ASP programs, you have no option but to use a windows server.