Web hosting / image hosting should be your first photoblog priority when deciding to get started with your online photography website. Nothing is more frustrating to your website visitors than slow server times or lower than expected server up-time. Poor server quality or server response time should not be an issue with the proliferation of web hosting service providers.

The first step in selecting your web hosting provider is to determine your needs. If you already have a hosting provider and just need remote file access , I highly recommend Box.net to everyone I come in contact with. Yes, I’m a BOX-freak and can’t live without it. They offer great customer service, dependable up-time, fast downloads, and an easy to use interface. The prices are a bargain for the services they provide. I tried out their 14 day free trial and signed up soon afterwards.

Beyond the large webhosting services, which are excellent, I would recommend taking a look at these top rated web hosting providers. Each offer tremendous packages at affordable prices, so you can focus on what you do best:

AN Hosting provides outstanding customer service and have a proven track record of exceptional performance. Their prices are among the best in the industry and in addition, they offer great design products, tremendous storage and bandwidth capacity.

HostPapa Green Energy Web Hosting . HostPapa is a privately-owned company located in Niagara Falls, NY and Oakville, Ontario, Canada. They pride themselves in outstanding customer service and excellent performance. For me, a key selling point was the use of renewable energy usage and would prefer to see more companies go in this direction. I also liked that they were headquartered not too far from my residence. Hostpapa offers some of the lowest prices in the industry. I love their unlimited domains hosted under one account. Their entry plan includes 1700GB web hosting, 17000 GB data transfer, no setup fees, and free domain for life !

Last, but definitely not least is ImHosted. ImHosted offers fast, affordable web hosting services to over 40,000+ customers around the globe. They offer a complete web hosting solution which features huge space and bandwidth, Cpanel, PHP, CGI/Perl, website builder with 1000 pre-designed templates, 110+ one-click install php apps along with 24/7 support and premium Tier-1 bandwidth. Although I am a PHP junkie, I like the fact that they offer a tremendous amount of templates for fast website deployment.