Over the last few years, I’ve utilized the services of quite a few different shared web hosting providers. My favorite by far has been AN Hosting. I’ll share the reasons why, but first, what in the world is shared hosting? Hosting a web site can be expensive business. Leasing a dedicated server that hosts only your site can cost hundreds of dollars per month. You also have to manage it by updating software, backing up data, and keeping it secure.

So shared hosting is a solution in which your site is hosted on a machine next to many other web sites. You share space – like renting an apartment for your website in an apartment complex. It’s affordable (more than ever) and you still have a lot of control over your web presence (more control than most site owners really need).

Perform a search for “web hosting” and you’ll see that the market is flooded with solutions, many of which are dirt cheap. But after working with quite a few, I’ve settled on recommending AN Hosting exclusively. Why?

1. The are affordable. For a few dollars per month you can have all the space and bandwidth you’ll need. In fact, the average shared hosting package has more space than 95% of web sites actually ever need.

2. They are quick on support. This is a big one. I have submitted probably a dozen different support tickets and have usually heard a response within an hour, and they’ve usually pinpointed my problem with a good fix. I have yet to have a frustrating support experience with AN.

3. They offer nice hardware and software. I recently had a client who needed PHP 5 and MySQL 5, but the host they were with was way behind in updating. But AN tends to update software within weeks of its release.

Cruise around my site and you’ll see that I offer hosting packages. Why, then, would I recommend another company’s services? It’s simple, I’m an authorized reseller for Autica Hosting, which is owned and operated by AN. I use my hosting ability to manage and “keep close to home” the client accounts which I serve, and group them together on my own server space. But if you’re not interested in my semi-full-service hosting options, then grab an AN Hosting account for yourself.