The most frequently asked question in Web Development is "Who should I use for web hosting"? And that's a pretty good question. I think you'll find that if you ask that question twenty different times in twenty different places, then you'll get twenty different answers. The answer is usually going to depend on what you're looking for, and what you need. Obviously someone that needs hosting for a static html personal website page is going to need a much different hosting package than someone who needs to host a dynamic, database driven ecommerce website.


The thing to remember is that hosts come in all different shapes and sizes. There are data centers that rent out physical servers to what I call 'first tier hosts'. These first tier servers usually have pretty good prices, but they usually only provide VPS or reseller accounts. 'second tier hosts' are those that rent VPS or reseller accounts form the first tier hosts, and rent our much smaller account. Sometimes there can be several 'tiers' where the web developer is actually renting from the guy that rents from the second tier host that rents form the first tier host that rents from the data center. One of the tricks to securing reliable web hosting is knowing how many 'middle men' are between you and the data center.


When I'm looking for a new host (something I've done recently and often), I typically like to start at a reputable website that provides user reviews of various hosts, such as webhostinginformation.net. Once there, I like to looks for reviews of a host I have targeted as potentially being my host. If I find very few complaints about my potential new host, and overwhelming compliments, then I may feel safe enough to proceed. This is a great means of using social networking as a means of researching hosts I may do business with.