One of the first things we always do when engaging a site as a new client (if it applies to them) is to “encourage” them to take control of their own web hosting.
This is vitally important for any number of reasons, but not least so that should they ever end up in a scenario with a nightmare webbie further down the line, (Ibiza has a few before you take offence to this) who maybe doesn’t believe in seo or something, or any of a wide variation of other random problems between web developers and clients we’ve seen (and been dragged into too many times) they at least have control of their domain / hosting and cannot have the business held to ransom by others.
This should be a given, but you’d be amazed how many small business owners buy sites (with domain and hosting) from their web designer and then end up paying well over the odds for hosting and support from that point onwards, because they are trapped at the mercy of less than ethical people, or risk losing their website / email if there’s any kind of dispute thereafter.
It’s well known that the physical geographical location of your a site’s hosting is a strong factor in how it will rank in the different countries Google indexes, so this is usually the primary factor in the choice of hosting companies, you basically need a good one based in whatever country you are primarily targeting. We’ve traditionally used Godaddy in the States but have also been using smaller companies lately, as we feel that supporting your local small business in the credit crunch is a good thing.
So these are our choice of recommended small web hosting companies by area, chosen for their support, service, ease of use, and price.
Ibiza (UK Servers) ..Dot Dot Click – a mate and local (Ibiza) based company, don’t be fooled by the old-looking website, 
they use pipex and provide service and support as good as any.
US Servers Mckremie web hosting provide a world class hosting service at small business prices, an unconditional 30 day money back guarantee
..if you’re not happy for any reason, (123.co.uk would be f***ed if they tried this 
) and they’ll even let you pay by Paypal, can’t really fault this one.
There’s also a whole sub-industry grown up around “SEO friendly” web hosting lately but the main thrust of this seems to be the ability to own multiple different C-Class IP addresses, which if you’re not running large site or blog networks for linking (spam?) purposes are probably not going to help you very much.
We would be wary of these, simply because if you’re not doing anything wrong, do you really want to be on the same servers as others who are going to use these facilities to “bend” Google’s rules at the very least?
You could find yourself on the same machine and IP range as the ultimate black cat Russian mafia spammer bot network server or something equally dubious.
Lastly we haven’t actually found a superior small business Spanish hosted / hosting company which we feel we can wholeheartedly recommend yet, if anybody knows (and can genuinely vouch for one) please feel free to leave it in the comments and we may add it to the list if we can find other people speaking well of it.
Hasta luego amigos
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
hey this struck a chord with me, have emailed you, hope that’s ok.
I really like your blog.
Devika