♥ Princessa's Royal Diary ♥ - Royalty has never been so PINK!

Traditionally, free web hosting services aren't as common as compared to presently. Thus, people would somewhat only "purchase" a domain, engage web hosting services and such, for the sake of business, community building, development and/or such purposes.

Nowadays (not exactly that recent), with the advancement of technology and such, there are more and more free web hosting services are open for public usage. And more and more people start "creating" websites, be it for business or for personal usage (blogging).

A free web hosting service is perfect for personal websites. You can get your own space on the Internet without having to pay for it.

However, several free web hosts tend to place banner ads, pop-ups and for some... Well, they appear to have nothing on the site but usually find some other way to get their advertising included in the deal.

The most annoying part is, free web hosts usually offer no guarantee of site uptime, you have few or no additional features, and you can't be certain when they might "close shop".

Businessmen and/or women, seeing such a rise of website creations (in other words, seeing the demand in web hosting), started "invading" this industry. Therefore, more companies that provide web hosting services came to be.

Economics 101 - Due to the previous demand created, there was a fluctuation in supply. With this overwhelming increase in supply, the price war begins, and prices drop tremendously, making it affordable to almost all?

^{P/s: This is "my theory".}

Now, as the prices are lower, people are more willing to pay. But having so many choices, exactly which is the right web hosting provider to pick?

Before going into that, I've said quite a bit about the "web hosting" thingy. But do you know what web hosting is defined as?

For those who do not, according to Wikipedia:

A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to provide their own websites accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own for use by their clients as well as providing Internet connectivity, typically in a data center. Web hosts can also provide data center space and connectivity to the Internet for servers they do not own to be located in their data center, called co-location.

That's that. Let's move on...

Price is one issue. Humans being humans would probably go for the cheapest they can find, since most provide similar features anyway. But is that all that matters, "the price"?

There are a number of objective criteria that separates the various web hosting companies from one another, other then just $$$.

I don't know about the rest of you. For me, if I were to purchase a product, especially when it's a long-term commitment thing. The "company" or "sales person" would have to satisfy 3 major criteria.

1. Service - quality of product, customer service and etc.
2. Price - the cheaper the better, of course.
3. Freebie - anything kinda pleases me.

Service is more important then the price actually. Sometimes, I rather pay a little more to get the RIGHT kind of service. But that's just me though.

What about the rest of you? What do you think is important?