When choosing a web hosting company for your website, the first thing you need to know is exactly what your hosting requirements are. These consist of the following:

1. Do you need Dedicated Hosting or will Shared Hosting work? – The two main requirements of your website will answer this question. How much traffic do you expect your site to get and what level of administrative privileges do you need? For more traffic, you’ll need a Dedicated Server. Other reasons to go with a Dedicated Server include needing secure information, customized options, or complex applications.
2. Do you need Windows Hosting or Linux Hosting? – Choose Windows Hosting for Microsoft applications or server technologies like JSP or ASP.
3. What are your requirements regarding space and bandwidth? – Look at what your website is trying to do. Also, consider the traffic numbers again. These will help figure out how much space and bandwidth you’ll need.
4. How many Parked Domains and Subdomains are needed? – Sometimes certain web hosting packages offer these for free. But the more you need, the more you’ll need to pay.
5. What are your FTP Accounts and Anonymous FTP Requirements? – If you’ve got people working on your site at different places, you might need more than one FTP account. To limit access of the general public to certain places on your website, you’ll need an Anonymous FTP.
6. Do you need e-commerce features?
7. Does your website need more than 99.5 percent uptime? – This is especially important for business websites.
8. How fast do your servers need to be? – Your web host needs to have at least a T3 connection to the backbone of the major Internet.
9. How often does the server perform backups? – This is needed to make sure your data stays secure in the event of power failure.
10. What are your Disk Space and bandwidth needs?
11. Analyze your software and scripts needs: Make sure your web host has an extensive library of scripts so you can add such things as forms, guest books, newsletters, surveys and more to your site.
12. 24 /7 customer service support

Once you’ve figured out the above requirements for your web site, it’s time to look at the top 10 web hosting companies so that you can choose the best one to meet your needs.