During the course of the last 2 years I've had the opportunity to work on a number of different Joomla web hosting providers. These were basically "shared hosting accounts" the customers had purchased. The attraction of a shared hosting account is basically the low cost. For anywhere from $5.99 to $19.95 per monthly you can host your website, get email capability and a host of other features. It really can be a great deal.

There a number of issues though that I have seen come up with the different providers. Paying $4,95 per onth for your website hosting may seem like a great deal but it all goes down the drain if your site is constantly having problems.

Here are a few of the issues I've encountered in the past dealing with some of the cheaper web hosting services:

1) Slow sever response times.

I see this a lot with the really cheap hosting service plans. Unless you are running your Joomla installation with a good caching component, the Joomla CMS is constabtly querying the database to retrieve the content and present the web pages. All these queries start to add up especially if the other cusotmers running on your shared hosting server are doing the same thing. The databse bogs down a bit and your site response time goes way up. I've seen this a lot with Godaddy's really cheap web hosting plans. The response time for the web sites at times is terrible.

2) Misconfigured servers for running Joomla.

The Joomla WCMS needs certain processes and software running on the web server to run optimally. For the most part most of the web host providers handle this well. They either are running the correct processes or they have something simliar running that will work as a workaround. Some though have their own particular web server configurations that will have you pulling your hair out trying to get Joomla to work. One of these is Yahoo Small Business hosting. At the time of this writing without going into all the technical jargon I wouldn't advise running your Joomla installation on Yahoo Small Busines hosting. There are so many thing you have to tweak on your Joomla install to get it to run securely it itsn't for the beginner to tackle.

For the most part if you choose a web provider that offers the Linux platform with Cpanel access in the hosting plan you are safe and will probably be able to run your Joomla installion optimally.

3) Poor technical support.

This is the number one killer to keeping your website up and running optimally.

In the computer workd you will eventually have problems with your website in some form. The ability to access trained technical support staff quickly anf efficiently is a number one concern.  Notice I said 'trained technical support staff' and not just customer support. We've all been through the nightmare of reporting a problem to either a web company, our phone company, etc.,  and gettindg a genral support person on the phone. They usually have zero technical knowledge and often are just offering triage to your problem until a technical person picks up the support ticket. This can be infuriating as it becomes apparent the person has no clue how to solve your issue nor can they state affirmitively when t will be looked at by someone that does. I can  get around this as I usually know exactly what the problem is but don't have any access to the web server to make the change myself, Web server admin access is not something you are given with your shared hosting plan. You have to contact the web host for their administators to fix it. A few hositng providers have put me immediately through to the server admins to get the problem resolved. Most will not do this. They will simple pacify you as much as they can and then tell you your support ticket will be looked at shortly.  In a way you really can't blame them. When you are only paying $5.95 per month for your hosting plan you can't expect $100 per hour service. I did though find a very responsive Joomla web hosting provider that I recommend.

Who Do I recommend?

Potential clients often ask me for recommendations on which web hosting provider they should use. I've worked on or had accounts with most of them form Godaddy, 1&1, Siteground, Net Firms, etc., and the the one I recommend for my client is Host Gator. They have the absolutle best support I've seen in the indusrty. This is just my opinion but it is based on countless calls to different support centers. Whenever I needed a server change or special configuration they were ultra responsive. It is a very profesional company to deal with and they will bend over backwards to give you the proper support.

They have a Linux hosting plan called the 'Baby Plan' that is perfect for 90% of the people wanting to run Joomla. I recommend them wholeheartedly. If you are looking for affordable, reliable web hosting for your Joomla website check them out.