There are so many web hosting services out there that it’s hard to choose the best hosting for your and your site.

A lot of site owners shop their hosting by price. Budget is an important thing to consider, but since the differences in hosting prices are negligible, there are other features and more important factors to consider when choosing the perfect hosting for you.

1. Uptime and Reliability

No matter how much fancy features the hosting offers you, they are no good if the site is down in many parts of the day. Look for hosting services that guarantee uptime, and tell you exactly how they implement this promise.

2. Customer and Technical Support

Customer support in a web hosting service should be efficient and effective, as well as polite and responsive. If you are quickly answered when contacting your hosting service, that’s a good sign. However, prompt responses aren’t enough – the hosting’s support should also be able to actually solve your problems. So – look for a combination of efficiency and responsiveness.

3. Control

If the hosting service offering you a full, user-friendly control panel? Do you have all the access you need? Is it easy to find all the functions you require for running your website? Is there proper documentation and help articles? If the answer is YES to all of these questions – than you are in the right place. The situation is ideal if you have full control of your site and can manage it on your own – most of the time.

4. Backups

A good hosting will not only enable you to back up your files, but will also do it for you, periodically. Choose a hosting service that backs up regularly.

5. Server Features

Whether you require a Linux or Windows server will depend on what you plan to do with your site. Linux servers are often cheaper, ideal for CMS like WordPress and Drupal and are more stable. However, if you need to host ASP scripts then you have no choice but to look for a Windows web host. A good hosting service will offer both kinds of servers, and enable you to move between plans when necessary.

Web hosting is always changing and updating. If you own a site, or planning to build one, it’s important to know what’s new in the web hosting services arena. Here’s a collection of news and updates of web hosting, hosting services and web development:

Deutsche Telekom takes over Web Hosting Service Strato

Deutsche Telekom informed it will take over Strato, a German Web hosting company. The boards of both companies had approved the plan but that it still faces regulatory approvals.Financial details were not disclosed.

Telekom claims the transaction would make it a leader in the German Web hosting market with Strato’s products that include and enable email, Web sites, blogs, online shopping and data storage. Strato’s business is primarily aimed at consumers and small businesses.

Strato, based in Berlin operates about 4 million hosted domains.

UK Web Hosting Service Namesco Buys Poundhost

UK domain registrar and web hosting provider Namesco has acquired UK dedicated hosting provider Poundhost. This is the first major acquisition for Namesco since May 2008.

Namesco is currently the fourth largest domain name and hosting provider within the UK. The company will own 100% of the capital of the companies composing Poundhost, including Poundhost Internet, Server Arcade, VPS and Blueconnex.

Poundhost has over 10,000 dedicated and virtual servers and a large high-end customer base, 30% of which resides in the US.

Hosting Service Site5 Plants A Tree for Each New Hosting Account

Although world leaders fail to reach a binding climate agreement this year in Copenhagen, there is still hope and action at the grassroots level. Web hosting service Site5 has partnered with mokugift to plant a tree for every new hosting account.

“Tree-planting with new accounts is a natural extension of Site5′s existing environmental philosophy. Site5′s business was designed around a remote workforce which is the greenest possible option for a company”, explained Ben Welch-Bolen, CEO of Site5.

If you are looking for a fast, efficient, extremely professional web hosting service – you might wanna go with InMotion.

InMotion puts an interesting emphasis on speed, and this is a very important consideration when choosing a hosting service.

While most hosting services utilize a single data center, which means your website and email could be very far from you – and sometimes slow because of that. InMotion allows you to choose your data center location, which makes your site faster and more efficient.

InMotion’s Business Class Offers 3 different plans – from a very basic one for small sites (2 databases, 2 domains, 25 sub domains) to a pro plan that offers unlimited domains, FTP accounts, e-mail addresses etc. The prices range from 6.95$ a month to 18.95$ a month – a very reasonable price for the great package you get. All business class web hosting plans come with a 90 Day Money Back Guarantee – so you can try it out before committing.

The 30 self installing scripts that are a part of all packages are very useful. There is also a choice of 2 website builders from InMotion – most hosting services offer only one. If you are into commercial sites, InMotion offers a variety of commercial features, including different kinds of shopping carts and payment methods.

Cpanel is InMotion’s choice of control panel – which is great. It’s easy to use and offers many professional features for advanced user. It’s also a common control panel for hosting services, which means a lot of people use it, so there’s lots of support and help around.

InMotion has won quite a few awards in the field of customer service. InMotion offers a lot of good tutorials, and a great customer support with live chat option.

Click here for more info about InMotion Hosting