Actually, the post of this title should read web hosting search blues. I have been considering moving to a different web host, mainly because of the need for more web space. There are a zillion sites offering reviews of web hosting products, and some of these reviews are indeed helpful. Here is what I have gathered after painstakingly going thro many reviews and web hosting offers:

• There are only few consistently good web hosting companies out there. Bluehost, 1&1, Siteground are some of them.
• Almost all these companies have their products similarly priced. If you see something too good to be true, then it means you have not read the fine print. One such very annoying fine print is the pricing structure. At the face of it, you may read that for $5 you are getting an amazing deal of 5GB webspace and the works. But when you read the fine print (some of which is hard to find), you’ll realize that it is $5 only if you pay upfront for 12 months. For monthly payment, the same deal would cost you $8 which is no different from what most other sites offer!
• Some sites have ’setup fees’, ‘backup fees’, ‘domain name fees’ etc. If you need to back up your site, you might have to shell out upto $24!!
• Not all sites have a standard control panel. Cpanel is on my current web host, and it is really awesome. But very few of the good hosting companies use Cpanel. With Cpanel, you generally get something called Fantastico. This neat little tool automatically installs several software via scripts. So you need not get your hands dirty installing Wordpress, Gallery and the like.

I am disappointed not to find anything below $7, and in the >1GB range. C’mon, I am never gonna use 5 GB, so why don’t you offer me something like 1GB and charge me less? If I pay $7, I may not be making the best of the 5Gb until maybe 2 years (by which time I may have a HUGE image gallery), so what’s the point in me paying for so much webspace upfront?

Nevertheless, the search is on, and I hope to stumble upon something good soon. Meanwhile, I totally love my current host and couldn’t recommend them enough for their low price products.