Hi guys.

I'm starting out my first domain and hopefully I can earn enough money to support my life. After having the domain, I need to buy shared hosting service. Anyone know who are the best shared hosting company out there? My site is a brand new one, so expect to have little traffic.

Buying a domain and shared hosting is probably the first thing every webmaster need to do to set up their online business. Buying a domain is straight forward, since domain registrar everywhere are about the same. However, it is important to choose a stable shared hosting since it directly affect your website performance.

The first thing you should do is to search for which company offer the service within your budget. Then you should do a google search about that company to see if other people have any review about that company. Remember, don't be panic if you see a few negative reviews. The reviews are usually just personal reviews, and many times they are reviews created by competitors of the company. Don't look at the positive reviews. Most positive reviews are fake.

Of course you should avoid a company with a lot of negative reviews. But a few negative reviews are fine.

Then, look at their policy, to see if they offer 30-day money back guarantee. If they don't have, better to skip them and move on to another company.

Then you just place an order with the one that passed all of the above criteria. Don't worry, if the service is not s what you expected, you can request a refund anytime within 30 days.

Anyone know who are the best shared hosting company out there?

I think nobody can answer your question, since there is no such thing as "the best shared hosting company". Depend on your requirement, a company is the best, but for other people expectation, another company is the best.

That's being said, there are various way to identify the best company for you. If you are a new webmaster and not familiar with shared hosting, you should pick a provider that has fast ticket response time, so that you can ask them when you need.

If you are an average webmaster, you may want a host that offer the best software in the industry, like cPanel, WHMCS, Softaculous, R1soft, etc, since it is more convenient for you to manage your account.

If you are an experienced webmaster, you have big sites with a lot of traffic, you will want a provider that has stable server with little down time.

A few of the above things can be verified by pre-sale tickets, others can only be verified by having an actual service with them.

And as what another member has mention: Do not trust online reviews. Most of them are created by either competitor or by a member of their company. It is so easy to create an online fake review.

Many thanks for the comprehensive advice. But isn't there a tentative list of hosts that is cheap and reasonably reliable for a my new website? Like less than $2 per month, little down time, page load at most 4-5 seconds.