If you are a webmaster, I am sure that you understand how important it is to add fresh content to your site on a consistent basis. Sadly, some web hosts may force you to deal with a lot of downtime. One of the most important features of a good web host is their up time and reliability because downtime can mean lost revenue. In fact, many of your marketing techniques will rely on the uptime of your site. Therefore, continuous downtime can mean lost traffic, sales and ultimately the demise of your site.

The biggest cause for a web hosts downtime is simply because there are far too many accounts located on one server. This causes the server to become crowded and overloaded. The truth is that if one website on a shared server uses a lot of resources to operate, your own site could suffer from lack of resources needed for operation.

Sadly, all too often most beginning webmasters don’t consider all of the important factors when choosing their hosting provider. Usually, most webmasters simply choose the basic features needed; these are generally what are offered by a regular virtual hosting provider and not a dedicated server. When you’re first starting, most likely your website will not have a lot of traffic and the most basic options will work just fine. However, if you intend for your website to grow will need more resources and upgrading to a VPS or dedicated server might be a better choice. If you begin your website on a shared hosting account, you may have to migrate your website and all its content to a dedicated server to accommodate your needs in the future. If you know that your site will grow fast it may be best to begin your services on the dedicated server in the first place to accommodate the ever-changing needs of your site.

Besides the most basic features that are offered by most web hosting providers, other features that you should look for are the amount of disk space offered, the amount of bandwidth available for your sites, the number of e-mail accounts and mySQL databases allowed so that your site can grow.

Finally, one of the most important requirements of a Web hosting provider is excellent service. High quality customer service will help you if you are a beginning webmaster that is learning how to deal with web elements, scripts, and other hosting features. Taking these features into consideration when you first begin your website will be a big timesaver in the future.