One suggestion I have is to look for a hosting company that provides a discussion board for customers.
This can help you gauge the size of the community and whether the community is generally happy or unhappy with the service, the issues they may be facing, what kind of support they get, and how much of the response is from the community versus the hosting company. A supportive customer base can be a huge asset.
A formalized trouble-ticket system is also a good sign.
I've hosted a number of happy clients on bluehost.com, but you can also Google* "top 10 web hosting" or "web hosting reviews".
* or substitute your favorite alternative search engine.
Hi Kate-
One of our very knowledgeable veteran community members JHB put together this great information about her experience with websites on the thread below. Thought you'd be interested.
I think the answer to your question depends on what it is you are looking for exactly.
I have our site set up through yahoo small business, mainly because they have a stand alone sitebuilder program that was down loadable at no extra cost. While I have since found less expensive sites I am not able to do a number of things that yahoo allows me to do in the development stage on a majority of the sites. Also, I can't seem to get our url, which I refuse to give up since we have now had it for five years, to transfer to a new site. (Although this may be more my tech issue then a yahoo issue.)
I know some strongly recommend weebly. Which I have used as well for another forum I am a part of when we had a major site emergency. It worked great then, but it was limited as to what could be done. Once again, it is all just a matter of WHAT you want to accomplish and what tools you need.
We are looking into creating a website for our PTO. We are having trouble weeding through all of the web hosting sites. There isn't a way to find out which hosting sites are reliable. Does anyone have a reconmendation? Thank you!
