When you are trusting a web hosting company to host your websites online you need to be sure about them. You need to know that they won’t spend huge amounts of time offline and that they won’t screw you over if you need to grow your website.

The problem with many of the smaller companies is finding anyone who has used them for them to actually have a reputation (ignore any claims made by the company itself). And the problem with the big companies is both the sheer amount of presence they have all over and the few disgruntled customers making a lot of noise (any service, no matter how great, will have a few unhappy customers).

So how do you separate the wheat from the chaff? How do you know what the real reputation is? Well there are a few ways…

Tips on how to find the reputation of a web host:

• Referrals. Of course the best way of finding any sort of service is to be referred by someone you trust. That way you don’t have to worry about what their motives are, if they can be trusted etc.
• Web Hosting Forums. The next best way is to look on forums for recommendations. While some will have ulterior motives (being part of the company, competitors etc), many others will have had experiences that you can tap into.
• Asking around. There are a lot of social networking sites – the likes of Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin could be a goldmine for finding people in an extended network who can give you the answers that you need.
• Blogs you trust. Ask any blogs or sites that you trust for their hosts or recommendations. Far more reliable then looking for randoms.
• Google. Look for customer’s web hosting reviews and experiences with web hosts.