If you are new to the world of finding a web hosting provider, and are not sure how to figure out which is the best and which to avoid, here are the features you should look for when choosing one.

An all-inclusive monthly fee — Some of the worst web hosting providers in Australia pull you in by offering you a low monthly fee to host your website on their servers. When you look at the features that includes, however, you realize quickly they are charging you extra for features the better web hosting providers offer for free.

Look for a web hosting provider in Australia that has an all-inclusive monthly fee. That fee should include features like an SSL certificate, a CPanel, and free automatic daily backups of your site.

Free website migration — One of the biggest web hosting providers in Australia migrates your site from the server of the provider you now use to one of their servers. The problem comes in when they charge almost $150 for doing that. For a service most other web hosting providers in Australia offer completely free of charge.

Never go with a company that charges you to migrate your site from one provider to theirs. There is no need. Especially when the prices they charge are so high.

Fast servers — The speed your website loads is key when it comes to how high Google places your site in their search results. If your site loads slowly, it will appear far down in Google search. If it loads quickly, it will appear much further up.

Make sure any hosting Australia provider that you decide to go with guarantees a certain site speed and, if your site does not get that, does everything they can to speed it up.

Monthly hosting fees — Several of the larger web hosting providers in Australia only offer annual fees for hosting your site.

While they also offer lower fees because you do pay for a year up front the problem is, if they are not reliable, you are either stuck with them for a year or you have to move your site elsewhere and lose all that money.

Only go with a hosting provider that allows you to pay monthly. It may be more expensive, but it is definitely worth it in the long run.

Guarantee up time of 99.9 percent — While no web hosting provider will guarantee a 100 percent up time for your site as things do happen, any provider you consider should guarantee it will be up 99.9 percent of the time.

Any provider that cannot is not worth dealing with as, every second your site is down, you lose money.

A free SSL certificate — An SSL certificate changes your site’s address from http to https. This is important, as Google is now using this in their ranking results.

Make sure any provider you go with not only offers each customer an SSL certificate for each of their sites, but also that it is free of charge.