So you are looking for the best web hosting options. You casually slide on over to google or your favorite search engine, and type in "web hosting" and what do you see? As of this writing, something like:

Results 1 - 10 of about 780,000,000 for web hosting

Hmm. Ok, your on your lunch hour at work, thinking you can knock this out in an hour tops. However, you just realized that if you start now you might wade through those results in a mere... light year or 2.

At this point, most people take 1 of 2 options:

1) Stare blankly at the screen while their brain continues to melt down as they ponder how they will ever figure out which web hosting company to trust with their website and money or

2) Calmly and cool-ly type the words "web hosting review" into their favorite search engine's cuddly little query form. If this is you, then smart move. Come to think of it (wait for the ah-ha moment...) that's probably how you found this article. Pure genius.

Anyway, let's boil it all down. Your decision needs to be driven by a few basic criteria:

How much storage space do you need?

Disk space has gotten so cheap that this is almost moot. For a personal web site, almost any basic package you buy will have more than most people ever need. Maybe even more than most small business websites need. Basically, space is cheap nowadays, but keep it in mind if your site will have vast numbers of articles or content, media files, or in some other way will use lots of space.

How much transfer space do you need?

Ditto. See above. Except, you do have to pay attention to disk transfer space if your site gets to the point of having incredible gobs of traffic each day. If so, and your hosting package only includes a limited amount of transfer space, you will be charged for the extra usage, or else your site will lock up or become unavailable to site visitors. If you do experience this problem, upgrade your account to get more transfer space - and then contact us via our Feedback Form and explain in detail how you managed to get all that traffic ;)

How reliable is the web host?

This means: "what is their guarantee for up time?" And that means: "can they guarantee at least 99.9% up-time?" If not, move on. For a great discussion of web hosting uptime guarantees and what they really mean, take a look at this article.

What features do you need?

Okay, this could get really long, but I will do my best to be brief. Which features you need is driven by what kind of website you are planning. Is it a personal site for friends or family or a professional web site? Will it be created with MS FrontPage? Will it be a forum or community site? Windows based or Linux? Do you require an Apache server? Will you be using SSI's (server side includes)? Will your site contain, or be primarily, a blog? I think you get the idea now, so I will shut up about features. If you don't know what these terms mean, don't worry about it. Basic packages abound that will likely exceed your wildest dreams about the features you actually need.

How competitive is the pricing?

Now this is a good one. It is a buyer's market people, so keep that in mind. Their are thousands of web hosting companies (maybe even millions, as in 780,000,000 ) Regardless of exactly how many, it is a-lot, and if you remember Economics 101, you will recall the law of supply and demand, which states roughly that "...the more saturated the market is for web hosting, the greater the features, disk space, guarantees, and technical support will be for a lower price than you can imagine..."

Web Hosting has become so affordable that you have no excuse not to launch that web site or blog you have dreamt about all of your life (or at least since the mid 90's) with all kinds of professional features and capabilities, for a price that amounts to peanuts (or a mere pittance if you prefer.)

Once you have answered these questions, you will be much better armed to recognize the web host that has the most to offer you for the lowest price.

Now you see? That wasn't so bad, and you probably have another 24 minutes or so on your lunch hour, so go get a sandwich, or better yet, get cracking on reading the web hosting reviews at 5pcom.com - And stop oozing brain all over your keyboard.