How to choose a web host

# Find your matching abstraction grade

Time is money too. Choose the provider that matches your developer skill level. The level of abstraction affects how much you need to worry about the underlying system. However, this doesn't mean that abstraction is only for beginners. Instead of spending time configuring your hosting architecture, focus on delivering your code. However, high levels of abstraction limit your options for deployment. Ultimately, you have many choices when it comes to selecting the right technology for your business needs and preferences.

# Consider quality of service and reliability

Is the provider really looking trustful? Does the provider maintain a public status board with historic incidents? After all, hosting is hosting, right? Yet, the quality of service can make all the difference. Factors such as ease and speed of interaction with the dashboard to change settings, as well as the helpfulness of the support team, can greatly impact the overall experience.

# Try before you buy

Many modern providers are offering a free trial or even a free tier without the need to enter a credit card. Try it out.

# Use personal recommendation

While this is not the most independent approach, pear intelligence can help to speed up decision making.

# Let the developers decide

Web hosting is often chosen or recommended by developers. Either they consult the client or they make active choices. This is good, because developers can better judge the service they need to interact with. The developer experience should play a role.

# Don't compare only by horsepower

It's a common misunderstanding that choosing a hosting provider is about getting a lot of computing power for only a few pennies. The quality of service is hard to judge and people often anticipate hosting to be a commodity. So hosting is often compared by horsepower for price. Customers want to be in control after all. Yet, you can not compare and even trust the specs as noted on the marketing websites. If you don't know the underlying server hardware and architecture you can not interpret these numbers.

# Be careful about big providers

Big hosting providers can leverage economics of scale. One must assume at least decent quality. But big hosting providers tend to have bloated service offerings that are hard to navigate. Also note that most big hosting vendors do not provide personal customer support. A big hosting provider may not care about your website and business that much at all.

Small hosting providers on the other side will be more invested to understand and support you business. They can also provide reliable hosting service. In addition you can find the feature set and service offering that is perfect for your needs.

# Check the 'soft facts'

Although, the following questions are hard to answer as an outside visitor, still see if your future hosting provider can find your trust in topics such as:

• Environmental impact: Are there details about energy usage?
• Privacy: Do the privacy measures convince you?
• Security: Does that sound safe?