Finding good business hosting is a very tricky task indeed. When buying anything on the Internet, it’s very difficult to work out who is telling the truth. Producing a ‘professional’ looking website isn’t difficult. However the ‘company’ behind that website could be a one man band, or worse still a teenager running their business from their bedroom.

Every business web host needs its managed dedicated servers to be reliable. You cannot afford for your website to be offline when a potential client is visiting. Similarly, if your sales are processed online, your business can’t afford for downtime. When looking at the best web host companies try and gage which ones are reliable and worth their salt, and which ones are going to cause you a headache. Web hosts normally monitor their own uptime and publish the results. Remember though, 99% uptime isn’t great and actually equates to hours of downtime.

Support at a high level from a website host is critical. If the website hosting servers go pop at 4am, you need to know your web hosting support team is on the case. Say for example you lose your main database, and then your backups dont work. Having your website on hand will make and break your business. Web hosting support can come in many forms. At the business end, you can expect business hours telephone support, which in itself is real peace of mind.

Business class website hosts run premium networks with business grade server hardware. There are those hosts that use cheap desktops to host on. Try and avoid these. Business hosting should run from redundant hard disk setups with frequent backups being made. Their network should be redundant; with multiple fail over points should anything bad happen.

Knowledge is vitally important for a web host to have. As we made the point earlier, it is very easy for a web host to fake the level of knowledge with a good website. However, do they walk the walk as well as talking the talk? There are some nifty methods to catch the deceptive host out. Drop an email with some technical questions, or better still give them a call. You can soon tell a confident, knowledgeable web hosting company by their responses.

Experience like knowledge is very important in making a good web host. When things go bang, experience and a cool head are crucial. Those web hosts that have experienced apocolyptic hosting meltdowns are in the best position to help you.

A vibrant community always shows a good web host. Having a community isnt a must have. In fact many corporate web hosts dont opt to have a community forum. However, an open book does say a lot about that web host.

These are just some of the points that make a good web host. One final piece of advice is to ensure you fully research your next web host before signing up with them.