Reliability and server uptime refers to how often your website will be available online. Most hosts stick to the rule of 99.9% uptime. This leaves room for any necessary server maintenance that might temporarily bring your site offline. Some hosting companies will even reimburse you for any time that’s over their guaranteed uptime.

Bandwidth translates to the amount of traffic and number of page views your website can handle every single month. It’s becoming common practice to offer unlimited bandwidth. However, there’s a chance this could get throttled down, or your site could go offline if you’re experiencing a massive traffic surge—such as during a holiday sale or if one of your blog posts just went viral.

If you’re on a shared hosting plan that offers unlimited bandwidth, keep in mind that unlimited might not really mean unlimited. Generally speaking, a site on a basic shared hosting plan can handle up to 30,000 visitors per month before you’ll notice that your loading speeds start to increase and your site performance starts to drop. However, if you’re at that level you can probably afford to upgrade to a better hosting package.

The other consideration is storage. The limits for storage vary widely across hosting companies and platforms. However, unless you’re storing videos, collecting and storing user data, or a ton of media content, you can probably get away with using minimum levels of storage.  

Customer support is something you really don’t think about until it’s too late. For some reason, your website is offline, and no matter what you do you can’t it back online. You’ve tried contacting your hosting company’s support team and they’re non-responsive. Plus, you’ve got a big launch the next day. That scenario doesn’t sound fun for anyone.

For this reason, you’ll want to test support yourself before selecting your hosting provider. Submit a question or two and ensure their methods of support work for you. For example, some companies only offer email support with a ticketing system, while others include live chat and phone support.

Lastly, a solid host will have an educational blog, along with a resource library, that should be able to help you work through any issues you may be experiencing.

When you first purchased hosting you probably only needed a single site. But, as your site grows, you may need to register more domains or set up subdomains for your existing domain.

Your host should be equipped with tools, such as cPanel, which allow for easy domain management.

Plus, when you’re purchasing hosting look for the ability to add multiple domains to a single hosting account. Some hosting providers will limit you to a single domain depending on your hosting package. However, it’s usually a wise decision to select a hosting package that allows for unlimited, or at the very least, multiple domains.

Hosting price increases are a pretty common practice—unless you end up purchasing hosting for multiple years at a time.

Price variances will happen, but they shouldn’t come as a shock. Make sure you select a hosting company that has clear pricing terms, so you know if and when a price increase is going to happen.

Finally, you’ll want to look for a host that can grow with you. Hopefully, your site won’t stay the same size for its entire life. If you’re starting a site, then you probably want it to be a success. Usually, this means more traffic.

Over time, what you require from a host will change. If you started with a basic shared hosting plan, then you might eventually need to upgrade to cloud hosting, or you may need web hosting for your WordPress site.  

When choosing a host make sure they offer scalable packages, or the ability to upgrade to a different hosting plan in time. You always have the option of migrating hosting providers, but it’s often much easier to find a host that you can stick with for the long term.