To make it possible for the people to access your web site via Internet browser, while using their personal computers, your web site must be placed on a computer that is connected to internet and has web server software running on it. This computer could be your own computer connected to Internet or it could be paid service provided by other company. The service is called hosting service and the company that provides it, is hosting provider.
For one website it is essential to be accessible 24 hours a day 365 days in the year. Otherwise if the website is often not accessible it will lose its visitors and will be skipped by the search engines. So, no point for such web site to exists.
Owner’s hosting is affordable for medium and big size companies, who have the resources to arrange high speed internet connection and to hire dedicated IT professionals, system administrators to handle their web site and other computer systems. For an individual and for the small companies in most cases it is much more reasonable to use the services offered by hosting providers.
Considering we need to use hosting provider services the main question is:
How to choose a hosting provider and what kind of hosting package to use?
First of all we have to know whether there is any special requirement regarding the hosting platform. It can be based on Windows or Linux/UNIX operating system. Most of the websites use Linux/UNIX based hosting services, while Windows hosting services are not so widely used yet. It depends very much on what scripting language and what data base is implemented in your website. We will try to summarize it in three simple rules:
- If your web site use one or more of the following: PHP, PERL, mySQL - choose Linux/UNIX hosting solution
- If your web site use: ASP, ASP.NET , Visual Basic , C-Sharp, MS Access data base or Microsoft SQL server - you need Windows based hosting solution
- If your web site does not use any of the above mentioned data bases or scripting languages, then either platform is suitable, but usually Linux based is cheaper and preferable.
Hosting Disk space and Bandwidth
One average website takes 3 to 5 MB of the disk space but very often it could be even less than 1 MB. It depends on how many web pages are published, how many images and linked files for download are involved. For example the site www.mbmproject.com uses approximately 5 MB of disk size while this one (www.topwebsite.info) uses less than 1MB. However, when considering the disk space offered by different hosting providers, note that in some cases this space is shared between the web site files, website data bases (if any) and the space taken by your e-mail boxes. Some hosting providers offer different space limit for e-mal boxes and some put limitation on the size of the data base. In other words, if it is not clearly specified in the hosting plan offer, send a message to the support address and ask them to clarify whether the disk space is shared and whether there is any additional limitations. This is also useful for checking how quick they handle the customers questions.
The bandwidth usage depends on how many visits your web site receives and whether there are any big files available for reading online or for download. This is the amount of data transferred between your site and other computers. Most of the web sites use less than 1GB per month.
Number of web sites hosted
Most hosting providers allows only one web site (domain) to be hosted per hosting plan. Considering that most of the hosting plans offer much more resources then one average web site requires, for those who has more then one web site, it would be money saving to host all web sites in one hosting plan. As a rule, all web site designers who offer web design and hosting to their customers, also use this option. This hosting feature is the most different one comparing the different hosting providers plans. Some of them offer 3, 5, 6 , 10, 50 or unlimited number of domains to be hosted in one hosting plan. Most of the hosting providers also offer reseller hosting services.
Be careful also about the number of subdomains that is allowed in one hosting plan. For most web sites it is not required, but some make use of it.
Databases
The number and the size of databases as well as their type (mySQL, Microsoft SQL, Access, etc.) will be important for most of the sites that have dynamic contents, forums, articles, catalogs, etc.
Programming / scripting languages
These are important and if you have your web site ready and it uses some scripting language, you should look for hosting provider who supports it.
E-mail accounts
Three important features to look for:
- the number of POP3 boxes
- the maximum size of one e-mail box
- is there nay web mail interface to access you e-mail
Hosting service options and extras
Free domain name registration
Some hosting providers do offer one or more domain names registration “for free”. This is one trick to attract more customers, while keeping slightly higher price comparing to the other hosting providers. Actually the “free domain” names offered are included in the hosting plan fee. Very often, they are not available unless you prepay for one or two years. Be careful, check in advance what would be the “penalty” fee if you want to move to different hosting provider and to keep the current domain name registered as “free domain”.
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Search engine advertising credit
Hosting providers offer an amount between $25 and $50 credit for one of Google, Overture, Yahoo or MSN advertising programs. However, this feature could not compensate bad customer service or poor performance. Hence, be careful and don’t consider this as high priority criteria when selecting your hosting provider.
Payment
Be careful for the following:
- Hosting provider who offer $6 on his entry page, but when you read his offer details, it appears that you have to prepay for two years to get $6 monthly fee, while when you pay month by month the price will be $10/mo for example.
- Setup fee - some hosting providers may require setup fee if you prepay for less than 6 months.
- Free domains - the free domains announced at the entry page and at the top of the offer are available only if you prepay your hosting plan for a period of one year and you could find this information at the bottom of the offer.
- Check if the price offered is end price /total price/ including VAT and/or other taxes.
- With new hosting provider it might be wise to pay month by month at least in the beginning, until you get an impression about the quality and reliability of the hosting services provided.