Web Hosting - How to choose the best web host

These are the basics... Below are the features you'll want to consider in a web host whether you're a newbie or a small business launching an e commerce type site.

You might as well consider these features as most are available for little cost: between $3.95 and $7.95 monthly. Also, which are the best web hosting companies? Are cheap web hosting companies all the same? What will you need for business web hosting? Read on and begin to understand the basics of web hosting, how to evaluate web hosting features, and ultimately how to choose the best web host.

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This webpage aims to help interested customers to choose the right web hosting company for their needs. One can find here help and advice for all aspects of your Internet needs - from business services to residential access.

What Is A Web Host ?

A web host is a service provider that places your web site on a computer which is connected to the internet. This then gives people who surf the internet a way to access your website. The computer that the web hosting company uses is typically just like the computer you have at home, the only difference being that it is set up to serve up web sites and is therefore called a "server". A web host will typically have a fast connection to the Internet and they may host thousands of web sites on many servers. The web host essentially rents out space to you so that you can get your website up on the world wide web. Some large web hosts own their own datacenter (collection of servers), some rent a server from a larger web hosting company and then resell the space under their own company name. In this case the web host will manage your account on the server, but they will be renting the actual web space from another much larger company.

Different Kinds Of Web Hosting

There are different kinds of web hosting setups and dependent upon your website and budget, any of these may be the right type. This is not a discussion of the features a web hosting plan may offer - just a description general types of web hosting.
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Free Web Hosting

It is possible to get free web hosting accounts. These are great for small websites, but normally you have to have a banner ad at the top of every page. Some free accounts let you use your domain name (free virtual hosting) and with some your website address is a subdomain of the free hosting company (www.yoursitename.freehosting.com). This second type is called Free Sub-domain hosting. Hosting for small websites can be very cheap, but If you can answer yes to all of the following questions, then free web hosting may be right for you.
- I don't care about having ads at the top of every page in my website
- I don't care about the performance / reliability of the website
- I don't expect any customer support
- My website is very small and will never grow
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Shared Web Hosting

This is the most common type of web hosting account and can be very low cost. With paid shared (virtual) hosting you pay a monthly fee and get a share on a server. For very low cost plans you may only have a small amount of disk space and a low amount of bandwidth (although this will probably not be a problem for the vast majority of websites). With cheap virtual hosting plans you maybe one site amongst hundreds on the same server. This is common and many small online buisiness's operate fine with this type of hosting plan - however the guarantee of reliability may suffer slightly. For slightly more expensive plans you will probably find better reliability.
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Dedicated Web Hosting

With dedicated hosting only your website or websites are hosted on the server. This is of course the more expensive option than shared hosting however it may be the best option if you plan on having many websites ( over 50 ) that require large bandwith and disk space.Perfect for re-selling shared web accounts Typically you will have access to the server just like you have access to your PC at home.
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Colocated Web Hosting

This is very similar to dedicated hosting, except that you own the server rather than rent it. Your server is placed in the datacenter and connected to the Internet through the web hosting providers fast Internet connection. You will then pay a fee for maintenance and bandwidth.
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So What Web Hosting Plan Is The Right One To Buy?

You have a lot of choices in the web hosting market and it can be very confusing to find the best deal that meets your needs. The 1st step before you start to look for a web hosting company is to determine what your needs are. It can be very tempting to look for plans that offer everything. There are many such deals available, even at a low price, but you will be storing up trouble for yourself. Look through the information below and consider your web needs first before comitting to any hosting plan.
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Disk Space

Lets break down the terminoligy briefly:

1 Byte-1 character. This sentence is 25 bytes.
1 KB 1000 Bytes
1 MB 1000 KB
1 GB 1000 MB

1 to 3 GB are relatively inexpensive. That'll support 100's of images, lots of text, articles etc. Why not get the most bang for your buck!? If you plan on growing your site, including archived article content, images for products or photo galleries then space will be a consideration. Think ahead to where your site will be in a few months. Typically a small e commerce site will function perfectly well with 20MB of disk space, which equates to room for lots of audio or video files and lots of pages.

If your hosting plan only allowed you 1MB of disk space you would still have capacity for about 100 of these images.

For example, 2mhost has a starter package for $1.95 per month that offers 100MB diskspace - that's enough room for 10,000 of these images!

This illustrates how cheap disk space really is. Of course, we don't evaluate a hosting package strictly on disk space.

Many web hosting plans will offer large amounts of disk space. This is fine, it okay to have the extra space - but unless you have a huge site - you will more than okay with 20MB.
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Data Transfer

Data transfer is the amount of bytes transfered from your site to visitors while browsing. This is also known as "traffic" or "bandwidth". For most web sites you will not need much bandwidth. Most websites need less than 2GB of data transfer monthly. For example a web site getting 2000 visitors a month transfering pages with lots of images uses about 1.4 GB of data transfer monthly. If you intend to have a lot of downloads of software, audio or video, then you may end up using a lot more bandwidth, maybe 50 GB. Adult sites typically use a lot of bandwidth. Sites like mp3.com require an enormous amount of bandwidth, but for the average site - a low level will be enough in almost all cases.

Most new sites that don't archive much in the way of articles use around 3 GB of bandwidth per month. Find out if there are fees for oveages and specifically what the policy is regarding exceeding the data transfer limit. Also be wary of packages that include "unlimited data transfer". The way "unlimited" may be defined could result in actually have limitations on bandwidth.
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SSL - Shopping Carts

If you plan on doing any ecommerce business you will need to implement these facilities. Especially if you plan on collecting credit card information, SSL ( secure sockets layer ) is mandatory. Shopping carts are available at many hosts and are usually offered with a higher priced hosting package.
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Infrastructure - Server Backbone

Expect nothing less than solid, up-to-date server technology and over-kill regarding up-time ( + 99% ). It is relatively inexpensive to find these features and going with a lesser host could result in down-time or worse, data loss. Typically a reliable low-cost web host's server infrastructure will read as follows:

- High Performance HP Servers
- 3 Data Center Locations
- Cisco Routers Using BGP4 Protocol
- Daily Tape Back-ups
- UPS Power Back-up, Diesel Back-up Generator
- 24/7 Network Monitoring

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Email Accounts

Nothing looks more unprofessional than a web site with an email address mapping to "soandso@aol.com" or "soandso@yahoo.com ". Most good web hosts offer email setup which allows you to create an email which matches the domain name. Even if you're a small company you definitely will need this to look professional. Look for ease of set up regarding this feature; most hosts allow you to create this once your control panel is established. The number of e-mail accounts varies between Low-cost hosts. If you have multi-departments in your organization for example, customer service, product sales or technical support, you may want to consider a host which includes multi-email accounts.
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Consider Script Support - ASP or PHP ?

Depending on who is developing your site , script support is something you may need to consider. Many low cost hosts will support either ASP or PHP, but probably not both. A little planning is necessary to avoid problems , potentially big problems down the road!

Make sure you check with whomever is developing the dynamic content for your website before you sign up with any host. What you'll want to know from the developer is what language they use for scripting dynamic content ( usually ASP or PHP ) and what kind of database they are using ( MS Access, SQL, MySql etc..). Then decide on a host based on this. Believe me, this will prevent changing web hosting companies after the project is under way. I have found this company, IPower web, excellent when it comes to all aspects of low cost PHP web hosting. iPower Web
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Please visit our recomended list of web hosts recommended web hosting services. Our list considers all of the above criterea for top quality low-cost reliable hosting needs.
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