Running a business online used to be handled by major companies, or those small businesses with owners who were tech savvy and had a great deal of knowledge of HTML, Flash, and the other major building blocks of the online community. If someone who wasn’t up on the latest advances in those areas wanted a site for their company they had to pay out the nose to do it, hiring a website designers to get the job done.

But times have changed. While some still take the route of commissioning a web designer to make them the perfect site, others have been taking advantage of affordable and user-friendly web hosts who offer you a shot at making a professional site on your own, using their simple building tools and customer service agents advice and assistance. But with so many out there, which are the best for the small business owner?

Hosting is a product, a service just like any other product, so when you purchase a product/service you expect support, support and support. This is even more important for hosting for several reasons:

1. Unlike your brick-and-mortar store, your website opens 24h, in another way at any time a customer can go to your store to buy stuffs or get information from you, you don’t want to turn them away by a “page not found” message. What if your server goes down at mid night and your hosting only provide support during work hour?
2. Some hosting providers claim they have 24h support service, but their time frame to answer your support request email is 12-24h, this is UNACCEPTABLE in my opinion.
3. Maintaining an online store is a hard task, especially if you are tech illiterate (which is not essentially a bad thing), so you need a hosting that can go beyond normal customer service to provide you with the support you need to grow your business.

We have compiled a list of the better hosting providers on the web for you, some of these are from our own opinion, some are recommended by our clients.

1. JaguarPC: a Texas based hosting company, this is the one we are using for our websites. Their shared hosting starts at 4.97usd/month as of the time this post is written. We have no experience with their shared hosting packages, but they have one of the best 24h support service for the VPS and dedicated packages we are using, all emails are usually answered within 15-30mins. We had some problems with the stability and speed in the past on their VPS servers, but they have been helpful in trying to help us sort out the issues.
2. Bluehost: since January this hosting company has managed to claw their way to the top of most lists for the best in professional website hosting. Their price is a big part of it, with packages starting as low as $3.95 per month for professional hosting. They also offer unlimited disk space, hosting for unlimited domains, 24 hour phone support, and an easy setup for those with existing domains. They also offer $25 free Yahoo credits, and $50 free Google credits. We have used this hosting provider in the past, the shared hosting we used had pretty good speed, and we didn’t have any issue during the 6months we used it so we don’t know how their customer service is.
3. Host Monster: usually $6.95 per month, they have a special running now that allows new users to sign up for half the price. They are all unlimited (space, bandwidth and hosting), which is perfect for a professional site that can’t always control the flow of traffic and wants to avoid sudden downtime. They also have no cancellation fees and immediate start-up and termination. We also used this one for a short amount of time, but that has been a long time ago, this hosting is used by several of our clients.
4. GoDaddy: very good place to get your SSL certs and domains, we do feel a bit guilty recommending it as a hosting provider, however, we have heard some not so good things about its hosting support services. Some of our friends say that it gets a bit better recently, we honestly don’t know. But if you bought SSL certs and domains from them, and you like them, perhaps you can try their hosting services as well. More per month than the two above websites, but offering some of the best customer service and perks in the business. GoDaddy has plans starting at $4.27 and ending in $14.99. They also offer domains for as low as $1.99, and a ton of additional applications from big names like Google.
5. HostGator: plans start at $4.95 with a plan to meet just about any need, and a great ad policy. But what makes them unique is their reseller program, which allows you to open up your own hosting company for a pretty low price. They also have a great dedicated server for $174 per month.
6. WebServe.me: if you are uncomfortable going to one of the big guys as a small business yourself, why not support another one of the little guys? WebServe.me is a hosting group run by IT know-it-all’s who are great at keeping their servers up and running. They are small and dedicated, and can provide you with a great hosting service for as little as $3.45 a month. You will be giving up some features that the bigger hosts provide, but you will make up for it in customer service and good karma.

If you have good/bad experiences with the above hosting providers or any other provider, please feel free to share here. If you are looking for a new hosting, we do have a warning for you: don’t rely too much on the reviews out there. Some people just have bad lucks, some others like to complain a lot, and as a rule of thumb 90% people post a review only when they have a real bad experience.

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