If you do a web search on Google for great web host, you will find that many web hosting plans are priced competitively. There are dozens of web hosting packages that will charge about 2.95 per month. There are many web hosts that will charge you five dollars per month. That’s why you can’t look at price to determine whether a web host is great or not. Instead, look for these three characteristics:

Domain name

Only choose the web host that will allow you to have your own domain name. Often web hosts will allow you to have a subdomain name, but not your own domain name. A sub domain name might look like this: Yourcompany.thishost.com. What you really want is your company.com. You may be just fine with using a subdomain, but in reality these types of names will cause you to lose credibility with your customers.

Up time

You can’t be fooled by 99% uptime. You want a company that offers 99.99% uptime.

Statistics

Statistics will tell you who is visiting your site and how many visitors you get per day. This will help you market your site more effectively.

These three characteristics are often called extras. The basic web hosting package may not offer these, but this is how you tell the difference between a good web hosting company and a great one.