Choosing a website host can really be a daunting task. You are not looking just for the best web hosting service but also the one that comes at a good price too (not necessarily the cheapest one though).  Once you start looking for a web host, you will find yourself surrounded with all kinds of web hosts. These web hosts will try to entice you with all kinds of offers. A number of web hosts throw-in a lot of stuff for free e.g. free website builder, additional 1000 email ids free etc. There will be others who will entice you with a discount (that is about to end today) on web hosting. Again, you will find a lot of web hosts offering a number of software for free (and it’s interesting to note that some of that software is open source which comes for free anyway). Most web hosts will offer discounts if you commit to use their web hosting service for longer periods of time e.g. for two years or five years etc.   

All such offers clutter the decision making process quite a bit. However, it is important that you don’t lose sight of your needs while browsing through all such offers from various web hosts. Here are some questions that you must ask yourself before you actually choose a web host: 

Do you really need that much server space as is being offered by that web host (also consider your future requirements)? A website that doesn’t use much graphics, images, sounds or movies, would really need much lesser space than what is offered by good web hosts. You can consult your website designer for this.

Is any of that free software going to be of any use to you at all? Do not fall for the trap that says save $500 in the form of free software) e.g. there could be a shopping cart application or similar add-on components that you know will never be needed for your website.

Do really need support for all those programming languages / databases that are being offered as an ‘extra’?

Is that website builder going to be of any use to you? Most business websites are not built using the website builders offered by web hosts; instead, other professional software is used for designing and developing the websites.

Do you really need 5000 email addresses when you know that you will never need more than 100 email addresses even in next ten years (and if you did need more, you would have to anyhow re-orient your web hosting requirements)

In fact, you should prepare a list of things that you are looking for and use it for selecting a web host (of course, web hosting reviews and the reputation of web hosts need to be considered too). Never let the free extras influence your decision