The Best Website Hosting Companies: The Top Two Hosts

^{At spotcoolstuff.com we usually write about unusual hotels, great gadgets, cool music and things that make us go WOW. Recently, we've gotten a lot of questions about the more mundane stuff of starting a website. So we're taking a quick interlude from our usual topics to write a series of five articles on web hosting and website domain name procurement. The other four articles in the series:}

• The Best Companies For Buying Domain Names
• How To Buy (And Sell) Domain Names Through eBay
• The Best Places To Make Money Parking A Website Domain Name
• The Best Website Hosting Companies: The Top Two Hosts

_{And with that . . .}

There are literally thousands of website hosting companies out there. Some are fly-by-night operations, some are outrageously expensive, many are sub-standard. Ignore those and you are left with a handful of companies that are both inexpensive and reliable.

We've reserached all the options within that best handful of hosting companies and found the two that, in our estimation, are the best. Before getting to those let's review some of the qualities to look for when choosing your host.

Custumer Service - This is a crucial factor in picking a host. It is also one of the hardest to judge. Many companies play up how great their online customer service is but what you really want is to be able to easily get some one on the phone. We've either have first hand experience with all the major hosting companies' customer service or have interviewed people who have.

Longevity - If a hosting company hasn't been around for a least five years, stay away.

Guaranteed "Up Time" - This is the percentage of time every month your website is guaranteed to be working. Many hosts play up their 99% up time. While that might sound impressive it translates to your website being down 7.4 hours every month. Insist on a host with at least 99.7% up time. And make sure that figure is guaranteed. If a company claims to be up 99.9% without a writen guarantee, don't believe it.

Disk space - The amount of storage for your files. Unless your website has lots of big photos or videos then 50GB of disk space should be more than enough. (Hosting companies, knowing this, will often try to lure customers with massive storage alotments).

Bandwidth - The amount of data users of your website can download in a given month.

Hosted domains and free POP email addresses - Most users only plan to host one website and need only one email address for that domain. However, we are big believers in allowing room to expand. These days you can find quality hosts that will let you host multiple domains and create multiple email addresses from them.

Set-up fees - These can be and should be avoided, especially if you can entering into a year contract.

So, with that, our selection for the best two hosting companies:

BlueHost

Nearly everyone familiar with the website hosting business has a possitive opinion of BlueHost. Their most superlative quality is their superb customer support. Unlike most other hosting companies, it isn't hard to get help from BlueHost over the phone.

BlueHost also has extremely reliable servers. Instead of an array of confusing hosting packages BlueHost offers one with very few constraints. BlueHost allows you to host unlimted domains, using unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth, on a single account. They'll even submit your site to the major search engines for no additional cost. It is a stunning value for only $6.95 a month.

Host Gator

Host Gator nearly matches BlueHost on customer service and are as reliable on website up-time. They are also a little more expensive. So why would you choose them over BlueHost? Two reasons:

First, an account with Host Gator comes with the excellent -- and free -- SiteStudio website designer, an easy-to-use program that lets even internet novices create websites. (SiteStudio is useful for people with intermediate HTML skills too). If you don't already have a means for building your website, Host Gator is excellent host choice.

Second, Host Gator is one of the leaders in a growing green movement among host companies. All of Host Gator's servers are powered by renewable energy.

If you are looking for cheaper hosts than the ones above, click here to read our reviews.

_{Copyright © 2009, Spotcoolstuff.com, All rights reserved.}