Choosing a Hosting Service For Your Blog

One of the steps in launching a blog is signing up for a web hosting service. The hosting company will host your blog’s files and database, displaying your blog on the Internet for the world to see. But with so many different web hosts out there, ranging in price, service, speed and reliability, how to you know which one to choose?

When you sign up for a web host, you’ll have to choose which type of account is right for your needs. The three main types of web hosting accounts are as follows:

• Shared – several customers (usually hundreds or thousands) share resources on a single server. This is the most affordable option, costing only a couple bucks a month. The downside, however, is that it’s often slower and more susceptible to hackers/malicious attacks.
• Virtual Private Server (VPS) – each customer is allocated a certain amount of resources of a given server. This doesn’t necessarily mean that each VPS customer has their own server, but instead they are given a specified amount of resources to ensure speed and reliability.
• Dedicated Server – You’ll have an entire server and all of the resources exclusively to yourself. This is the most expensive option, and also requires a greater technical knowledge.

A2 WordPress Hosting

Our #1 ranked web host is A2 Hosting for a number of reasons. They’re cheap, offer exceptional 24/7 live customer support and offer a 99.9% up-time guarantee. If you choose to sign up for a A2 Hosting account, I recommend going for either the “Prime” or “Prime Turbo” shared hosting plan. The Prime plan, which starts at $3.43/month, allows for unlimited add-on domains, disk space, bandwidth, email accounts, mySQL databases, one-click script installation and the latest version of cPanel.

Some of you might be eager to go ahead and upgrade to a VPS or even dedicated server, but the fact is that you wont need those additional resources until you’ve developed a large amount of traffic and email subscribers. Until then, stick with a shared account, as it’s both cheaper and easier to manage.

Other Hosting Companies

Of course, there are plenty of other web hosting companies worth considering as well. Take your time to compare the features and pricing of several web hosts before you make a final decision. Remember, you want a guaranteed uptime of 99% or greater, along with free disk space and databases. And if you’re new to blogging, you’ll probably want to choose a web host with cPanel installed.

Web Hosting Affiliates

No matter which web hosting company you go with, check out the information regarding their affiliate program. Most web hosts have a small link somewhere on their website, either on the top or on the footer, which takes you to their affiliate program. Depending on their program, you can earn upwards of $100 or more for a single hosting account sign up.