If you are planning to build a website for personal use or for your business, you have to take care of two basic things -- web domain and web hosting. Getting a web domain is quick and easy as you will just pick a name for your website and make sure no one owns it. Domain names are like signages that announces that the website is your particular corner of the Internet. Web hosting is like your house online and you need to be picky about it since it can spell success or disaster for your online presence. When choosing web hosting service providers, you have to consider several things: Know your requirements Web hosting companies will say everything to lure you in and do business with you. Before considering what they can offer you, you first need to know what your own requirements are. Keep in mind the kind of website you want to build. The needs for building a simple blog and establishing an online shop will have a lot of differences. Depending on expected traffic and needed security, you have to determine whether you need a shared server or a dedicated server. Shared servers means you share the space with other websites and this may be a problem if these other sites eat up system resources. However, they are very cheap. Dedicated servers, on the other hand, will allocate everything for your purpose. The you also have to choose between Linux and Windows servers. web hosting reviews While shopping around for the web hosting service that suits your needs, it will help a lot if you browse through web hosting reviews and see what other people are saying about your prospect companies. Check out ratings and rankings so you can gauge if customers are satisfied with the services of a particular web hosting company. Price You need to determine your budget. Prices for web hosting services will vary depending on what they can offer you. Remember that cheaper is better or the most expensive is best. You need to balance things and weigh the pros and cons of each offer. For personal websites, shared hosting services will come out cheaper. Small to medium business can go for dedicated servers that will be a bit pricier. Reliability You want a web host service that you can count on. If the service fails, this means that your followers or customers will be seeing an error message on your online domain, thus affecting your credibility. This will depend on the differentiators offered by web hosting companies such as RAM, databases, CPU, among other things. Customer Support This might be one of the most important factors when getting a web hosting service especially for the not so tech savvy. Issues might arise and you want to partner with a company that will be there for you any time of the day and help you resolve problems of your website. Go through web hosting reviews and see feedback from customers. Most companies today offer live chat support, telephone support, and ticket support.