There are hundreds of web hosting companies out there. How do you choose?

There are so many variables to take into account: from hardware specs like bandwidth, hard disk space, CPU and RAM; to software features like databases, email, operating systems, and web programming languages; to the responsiveness of customer support; to the ease of using your web hosting control panel; and general pricing structure.

If you’re just getting started with a web project and you’re having trouble deciding on a web hosting provider, take our advice: ask a nerd.

Our company provides managed web hosting for our customers through our partner HostGator, which we are pleased to announce has made it to 2nd Place in LifeHacker’s list of top five web hosting companies.

One pet peeve of ours is to be bombarded with sales offers when we’re trying to get work done. That’s why we would give a giant thumbs down to two web hosting companies in particular: GoDaddy and Network Solutions. We’ve found that when we log in and navigate around their control panels, a large fraction of the links on these pages do not point to actual tools and resources but to “upsell” pages that want to charge us for more for add-ons that we don’t need and never asked for. It’s fine to offer more services, but don’t deceive us by mixing these offers in with legitimate tools we need to manage an existing website. Good hosting companies don’t need to be aggressive in their sales and marketing. If they make their existing companies happy, word usually gets around.

Happy hosting!