Such as normal users will select shared hosting packages for their first websites, i am on the same boat, I am searching for tips to choose a good shared hosting.
How to check and how to know it's a good shared hosting?
Hello TheBigBee,
There are a TON of shared hosting providers out there. Picking the right one can be a challenge. Here are a few things to consider:
Reviews
Do some looking online and search for reviews. If you don't find any, thats ok, but if you find a lot of negative reviews, be very cautious! Be careful with the web hosting reviews websites. Most of these are full of fake reviews and affiliate links!
Resources
What does the hosting account provide for you. There are all kinds of plans, amounts of space, bandwidth, etc. Remember, you can also move up a plan when needed. Don't feel like you have to get the most expensive, just in case. Also be cautions with hosts that provide "unlimited" resources, especially on drive space. There is no such thing as unlimited! Some hosts use this as a marketing play and will limit what you you can use by their TOS.
Overselling
A webserver only has a certain amount of space, processing power, and memory, etc. Many of the larger name hosts are knows to "oversell" their servers. i.e. If their server has 4TB of hard drive space, but the customers on that server total a allotted 8TB of space. This can result in other websites using too many of the available resources, which will degrade your websites performance. Try to find a host that does not oversell their servers.
Not all drives are created equal
SSD's or Solid State Drives are great. There have MUCH faster read/write speeds, and no moving parts (less prone to failure and run cooler). This is quickly becoming the industry standard, but they are much more expensive compared to a traditional hard drive. If performance is important to you, especially if your website uses databases, look for a host with SSD's
Support
Pretty much everyone advertises 24/7/365 support, but how good is the support and how long does it take them to respond and fix issues. If you really want to know how good a host is, I always suggest signing up for their lowest package. Play with it, mess it up, submit some support tickets. Chances are, if they take good care of a $2/mo customer, they will take really good care of all of their customers!
I hope this helps!