With thousands of web hosting providers all around competing for one?s business, it may be confusing to find the one that’s right for one?s web site. The following are some key considerations that can help one to narrow down his/her choices to the most affordable and best options to meet one?s personal, professional or business web page needs.

What is the kind of web site that one is planning?

One?s personal web page has far different needs than one professional web page and that needs a different style of hosting than an eCommerce storefront. There are several web hosting companies offering plans sized to fit any size of style of web site. Thus selecting an appropriate plan depends upon the purpose for which one is developing his/her site.

Personal Web Page Hosting

Just like hosts there are dozens of free servers that will host your personal web pages for free, and many of them even offer most of the perks that one gets with a paid web hosting account. If one wants a personal web page without the ads, though, he/she can get a web page hosting for as little as $4. 95 per month with no advertising, and with support for things like PHP and mySQL. There are many affordable web hosting packages that even register a domain name for free.

Professional Web Page Hosting

If one is setting up a web site for a professional firm, he/she will definitely want to opt for a web page hosting provider offering excellent support, free or cheap domain name registration and a good web site builder with professional looking templates to make creating one?s web site easy. If one is planning to take orders or any sort of customer information via his/her web site, then he/she will also want a web hosting provider that offers one secure server access (SSL). Thus depending on the features one opts for ,one can pay $4. 95-$29. 95 per month.

Business/eCommerce Web Page Hosting

If one?s business web site is more than informational web pages about his/her business, his/her web hosting package should include eCommerce software like a shopping cart, a checkout, a payment system and SSL access. Thus one needs more space and bandwidth allowance than a typical personal site. One can find many affordable eCommerce web hosting packages starting at around $14. 95 per month.

Enterprise Level Web Page Hosting

Does one need space for one?s business to collaborate on projects, store information for easy retrieval and to track orders, deliveries and work hours? One requires a web hosting company that specializes in providing enterprise level web hosting solutions to large businesses. The best web hosting account should include the highest level security access to keep one?s important information secure, 24/7 customer support and tools to make access easy for all his/her employees. An affordable enterprise level packages start at around $99 per month and range upwards from there depending on the amount of customization and use that one?s web pages will obtain from it.

After completing the tough part i. e. creating the web site, the next further step to be followed is to host it, so that public can find ones site. The bad web host company traps the customers who are new to this web world and are web host seekers. There are many factors to be considered while selecting a web host, but the factor placed at the top is none other than price. All the users want cheap web hosting but if the web hosting is chosen on the basis of only price then it will not satisfy other requirements.

One should be very careful while choosing the web hosting company.

If one is having the budget he can fix to it, if one is not having much idea about web hosting he/she may wonder ?how do they make money? its better to be away, the chances are in order to save cost, the web site will be hosted with less bandwidth resulting in a very slow accessible and unprofessional web site. Also in this case, the customer support will be absent or very less.

One should be very clear about his/her requirements from the web hosting company, if the customer do not choose the company as per his/her requirements then its not the fault of host but only he/she will be solely responsible for that . Its good to make a list of requirements such as particular files needed and thereafter he/she can send his/her requirements to multiple hosting companies and can wait for the company come back with the greater service.

If any user is having more than one web site to host, as in case of affiliate marketers, its not good to put all sites with single host in the very beginning rather one should be 100% confident with the service and start with one web site as a test. The user should also keep in mind that if he/she wants to host all of his/her websites with one host company only, all it takes is, one problem to bring all his sites down and could result in lose of revenue. It is good to host some of the websites by another company so they can work even in case of problems.

Some web host companies offer testimonials on their own web site from valued customers recommending them. Seeing is not believing, one should call these customers and get a face value recommendation for him/her self.

What to do with the problems?

Now the problems can arise either due to the customer?s fault or by the web host company. There is no certainty of the technological Problem to occur, as it can occur any time but it?s all depending upon the host company how to handle such problem in order to keep the customer. If the user finds his/her web site dropping off line or slow downloading at a regular basis, then he/she should move to another web host company. If the problems pertain and the company is not paying attention to it means they are showing arrogant behavior towards their customers. Support is vital from a web host company and it should be 24 hour if it?s a large organization.

Virus Problems and Hackers

It is the responsibility of the company to ensure that the files of the customers are protected from virus and hackers at all times. There are number of companies having their web sites hacked and that happens only due to the reason that their web host company had not got the latest patches and security software applied. The new comers to web hosting should always ask how often updates and what software is used to protect web sites.

Tips:

One can have a good earning by his/her web site or can be this only source of income for him/her. Therefore one should always do his/her own backups of the web site. If due to any reason the web host company experiences problem and has no backups available, then the whole business could go stop. Backups are very crucial and have to be done as regular as possible in order to avoid problems afterwards. Some companies have testimonials on their web site from customers, one should not be afraid to call these guys for an up to date reference.

One should be very careful while dealing with host companies and should check recommendations and references very carefully. Always one should ask for the full contact details of the web hosting company, as there are many people who simply go online and have an email address only as the contact. Now if their email goes down and one needs to contact them one should have their full details at hand. One should always shop around for the different web hosting plans and should compare all the features available. On comparison it?s sure to get large differences, therefore it?s very important to check each and every thing before final sign up.

These days, anybody can afford to order a feature-packed web hosting plan for next to nothing; however, cheap price cannot said to be the decisive factor which one should have to considered while purchasing web hosting services. This article provides a lesson of not considering the best price and features as the only passport of getting a good web hosting company but also emphasizing on reliability and honesty. If one is investing his/her money and effort into finding paying customers and he/she wouldn’t like to lose them in the condition just in order to save a few dollars per month on a web hosting service.

If a user is searching for a web hosting company, it is not a matter of concern that it is just for the inception of a web or the move of an established site; the user has to widen his/her thinking area before coming to a judgment that along which company he or she has to go with:

Customer support

Website hosting service is not restricted just to storage or bandwidth. Lacking customer support, a top-notch service is also nothing. If one is owning a business website, it is both duty and requirement of his/her hosting provider to be available for the service- 24/7, as any time any sort of technical fault may arise; neglecting it the hosting provider may suffer from serious shortage of customers and money.

Downtime assurance and service monitoring

It is a minor inconvenience to go down when it is a case of personal website; but it is serious when it comes to business website. Can anyone guess how much amount of profit would he/she lose if his/her site had been down for a week? As it is a trend of spending a large amount on advertising the website a long downtime can be lethal for today?s companies.

Basically, there are two rules upon which one can relay:

1. One should check if there is an uptime guarantee offered or not. An ideal service-oriented provider will not only give a money-back guarantee, but also offer a discount or free service as compensation for downtime. A company which avoids taking such liability will not provide an ideal service.

2. One should not go with a company claiming 100% uptime, as there is no such thing as a server with 100% uptime. If anyone ever announces that their server has a 100% uptime; one can easily conclude that they are either lying or they don’t perform the necessary upgrades that avoid a machine from being compromised.

Reputable web hosts will post statistics on their site, the remedial solution for the questions like for e. g. , what is the frequency of interruption. How about the average percentage of downtime? If these aren?t posted, ask; if the answer isn?t forthcoming, that is not going to be a good sign. If one still likes to go with a host which doesn’t monitor servers, one has to do it by his/her own.

Backups

IS there any host who is safe against different types of technical and programical failures, the answer is NO! So, one should make sure that the company runs scheduled backups. The other probable advice would be that one must always have a backup of his/her website himself/herself, as one cannot predict what exactly is going to happen next. CPanel, currently the most popular web hosting management software, has a very comfortable backup-making tool. Which allows the user to backup files and databases quickly and easily, so backups are not a long head ace.

Acceptable use policy

Web hosts may have 200-300 or more clients per server; one cannot predict the exact number, as companies possess different hardware; while, each hosted website has different resource usage. One cannot ignore the probability of that a few of those customers host illegal content. There are several web hosts who have had their servers unplugged, resulting in their clients? websites going down. Definitely ,one would never like to put his/her business at risk and locate the website hosted on the same server along with illegal pornography and software sites, so to avoid such types of problems one must check host’s acceptable use policy to find out, whether the host takes care of what’s hosted on their servers or not.

Hosting one?s site on an uncared-for server will also result in a low speed. If somebody on the same server sends spam, the server’s IP address will be blacklisted and he/she will have serious problems as recipients would stop his/her receiving emails. Spam is being sent almost everywhere, so having one or two red records isn’t that bad; but, if there are more, it may become a problem later on.

Infinite bandwidth and web space

If one talks about the adage “you get what you pay for” it ideally suit for the Web hosting industry. One should not fall in the craters created by the hosts like for e. g. , unlimited allowances, as there is neither unlimited bandwidth, nor unlimited web space. Host’s pay for each GB of bandwidth themselves. One can think that hard drives are free but they aren’t. They are just a mirage to attract customers. The average website doesn’t use more than 1GB of bandwidth per month; the customer is satisfied as he/she bought something “unlimited” and through this host automatically receives a new customer, on whom they don?t need to spend more than $1-2 USD per month. But for imagination what would happen if one person had a website, burning much more bandwidth than an average site does, and he signed up with a hosting company offering unlimited traffic? The host would simply suspend his account and tell him, that it was via too much bandwidth. There even several companies there which offer unlimited bandwidth for the user and have a statement on their requisites of service, explaining that unlimited bandwidth means 40GB which they actually mean, for example.

Will someone really own his/her domain name?

If a user buy a domain name together with a website hosting package, he/she must make sure that the host is registered the domain name under his/her name or not. The name usually should be written in their FAQ, but, if there is no such information is provided, the user simply needs to take a step and contact them. This will also give the user a chance to detect whether their customer support team is fast enough or not. If the hosting company registers domains under someone else’s name, the user may have to face the challenges switching hosting providers later. If the user is in such situation, he/she have to file for a Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), which costs much beyond both domain name and web hosting service together.

Control Panel

A necessary tool for easiness and for regular maintenance, including, email mailbox additions/deletions, password resets, web additions, web count reports, statistics etc. This tool is unavoidable if the site is meant for any sort of business. That is why it is currently the most demanding web hosting management software. It is behind the screen role of a next-generation web hosting control panel system that allows a user to manage his/her domain through a web interface. The key idea is to transfer as much of the control of managing users web site to him/her; So one can say that, user have the ability to manage all the dimensions of e-mail, files, backup, FTP, CGI scripts, web site statistics, etc.

Value-added services

In the regular interval of time, hosting companies offer diverse sort of value-added services in order to give themselves an outstanding look. Of course, these are an advantage, but customers forget that many of the services cannot be applied in any of the field. But still some of the valuable features are mentioned below:

1. Auto-installer script ?

Play a role saving the user?s time if he/she is going to install a forum, image gallery, content management system, etc. Installation procedures on an auto-installer script can be done in seconds and can be easily performed by novices by avoiding difficult tasks generally related with installations.

2. Online website builder ?

Mainly dedicated with showing the way by moving on which the user can design a website in a few minutes without having any creation software and knowledge. One very powerful website builder established in the market is Site Studio; this quality based editor allows for ease of use, full control of color schemes and themes, one-click publishing, and a collection of templates to brought into use.

The last tip

The purpose of this article is to feel the users that price and allocations cannot be given reference over importance of quality of service; if the user possess limited budget, then the price can be a valid criterion, but if not, it should not be given much importance.

By going through this article and asking questions, one can narrow down the list of web hosts to the extent where the user by his/her own can make the judgment between what is right and what is wrong

One cannot deny the fact that, choosing an ideal web host is a daunting task. One will not have an opportunity to go to host?s head office to whom he/she is going to deal with, even he/she is unable to meet with the owners of that company, to measure whether their and user?s view matches or not which makes it more miserable.

In the majority of cases, a user comes to the conclusion by surfing the details on website.

The actual search begins right from the host?s website with whom the user has decided to deal with. Does their website possess a professional look? Silly errors like typing, spelling and grammatical can easily suggest the user that what types of people are running the company.

Can a person use that website without any problem? Is purpose of designing the web is for assisting the people? Assisting resources are available on the website or not? Evaluation of these questions will easily inform the user about the importance of client for that particular company.

Which is the place where the company is situated? What is the address? Do they provide the facility of email?

One should go carefully through the conditions of Service providing. The user should ensure that the web host has clearly mentioned both their priority and anticipation from the user in their document. No doubt, every deal is different from other, but everybody should know what each deal signifies.

Subsequently, user should extract information about the company through search engine, such as, Google. Is user getting any unfair report? Offbeat searching methods can also be useful, for example, displaying company?s name pursued by words such as “scam”, “poor support” etc.

At last, one should throw electronic mails to the customer support department to check how much the duration of their response is. Is it slow or instant?

If one seriously considers the above mentioned tips, it is not impossible to locate a needle from a lump of sand!!

There are thousands of webhosting companies in the industry screening for business. To ensure one makes best of ones decision possible consider the points mentioned here.

1. Server Space

First think to consider is the amount of space ones site will acquire on a server. Files might require just 1 and 5 megabyte of disk space unless one is planning to run a software repository or an image gallery. Just to out perform their competitors many companies offer several hundreds of megabytes of webspace for a very rational price. Before taking that much space one should question oneself whether that much space will be required ever. Though one should allow extra space for site to grow in future but at the same time one should not opt for a great deal on an extraordinarily sized account if one will never use all of the space which is being offered. One can always find a better deal with amount of space which would be more suitable for ones site size.

2. Data Transfer Allowance

Decision for Data Transfer Allowance should be based upon the above principal. Many are under the impression that their sites would be equal to next Yahoo or Amazon and would be receiving enormous number of visitors daily but one does not require extremely high data transfer allowance unless and until as stated above one is running a software download site or a large image gallery. One should not exceed ones limit just because one is getting an awesome deal as even heavily trafficked normal HTML sites usually use s just a small amount of gigabytes every month in bandwidth allowance. Many companies are offering ?unlimited” data transfer if one is planning to go for such an offer, be sure to read terms and conditions very carefully before opting for this type of account as there are generally some fine-print stipulations that make this claim not entirely true. For a small to medium sized business or personal site. A five or ten gigabyte bandwidth allowance is usually ample enough.

3. Technical Support

When choosing a web host types of technical support offered by the company and how easy they are to contact when needed is a very important point to consider. There are companies who do not even offer their contact number on their website though ideally a company has to offer 24/7 toll-free telephone support and email. Company that is very easily accessible in the time of need should be looked for. If one is in the mid of working on ones site and an important piece of information is required to conclude the job but is not able to contact the hosting company to get the information can be very frustrating.

4. CGI-Bin Access

Whether it is a contact form processor, mailing list management script or may be even a fancy credit card processing script one needs to install some type of CGI script eventually no matter what type of site one is planning on running. Hosting account will need to allow one to install and run them. One requires access to a special folder on ones server called “CGI-Bin?. Because of security measure only “pre-installed” scripts are allowed to use by few hosting accounts. As these scripts are already installed and configured by the owners of the company they are aware that these scripts will work properly and will not affect their server’s performance adversely. If one is acquainted with scripts, it’s always better to install ones own scripts that suit ones individual needs and configure them. One should make sure that the account one is using should support the languages like PHP, Perl, etc in which scripts are written

5. Up-Time Guarantee

How often and for how long servers “go down” for the webhosting company one is going to choose is a very important factor to be valued. Remember site cannot receive visitors or produce revenue if the machine on which it is hosted is not up and running no matter one has got a good deal on server space, bandwidth allowance, or tech support service is good. So select a company which can guarantee the highest up-time percentage possible. Its true that none of the company can offer 100% uptime as servers are taken down temporarily from time to time for maintenance or upgrading purposes but one always wants ones site to be hosted on dependable, well managed machines that do not have problems frequently and are down for long periods of time.

6. Email Accounts

Some companies offers heaps more email accounts than required just like transfer allowance and server space. Few even offer hundreds or even unlimited email accounts as a selling point. If one is just one person or is a small company 10 or 15 is enough but this can be an important factor if one is having thousands of employees each requiring email box.

7. Reputation

Last but not the least this is one of the most important factor to be considered while one is choosing ones web host. Today there are numerous sites around the Web featuring discussion forums that permit people to discuss and critique various hosting companies. Be aware of any negative feedback one may hear or read about a particular hosting company. Try Putting up questions about any company one might be interested in using to check if someone had any negative experiences with that company. While beginning a business one of my friend contacted a company to host his site and he was promised good, dependable service at a very low price. But for no obvious reason his entire site was deleted without giving any warning or explanation. He then visited few forums and found that many had negative experiences with that hosting company. So my suggestion is to not make the same mistake which my friend did so search out from beginning and make sure that the hosting company one chooses will not let one down.

Before coming directly to characteristics of good and cheap web host first it’s better to have review of the fundamentals.

Defining Web Host.

A web host is a service provider that places websites of its customers on a server, which is connected to Internet.

For proving this facility a web hosting provider is generally having high-speed Internet connection as they have to host thousand of web sites on many servers depending upon requirement. Essentially the host providers rent out space where a user can get his website made available to whole world through www i. e. World Wide Web.

The best part of web hosting facility is that now its easy to manage the website even for a layman as all the technical aspects like maintenance of complicated server technology, technical maintenance etc us now the work of these providers. Now one can easily focus on his own Internet business for rest there is host provider.

Now coming to the point following are the features offered.

Features

The followings are the features available in most web hosting plans:

? Control Panel

A control panel is an interface by which access of website on web server is made possible, it helps in setting up and constantly updating as well as customizing the website. Some host providers customize their own control panel so as to enable them to upgrade and expand it when and where required.

? Disk space

Most of the sites that have less data or graphics or video clips or big downloadable files can use 50MB of disk space easily. This helps in further growth for reseller as he can use that space of host providers for other purpose.

? Bandwidth

It is the amount of data sends or received through a unit of time. When a visitor downloads files from website on his own computer then that time it is the bandwidth which is making that possible.

? Email Account

With the use of POP3 email accounts one can check email from Outlook, Netscape Mail, Eudora or any other Email software.

? Scripting language

As now the latest technology is based on Unix and Linux platform only host that support latest versions languages like php, perl and CGI must be selected as that can only provide the optimum utilization of money one is paying.

? Database

For displaying big amount of data like user accounts, stock prices, maps, Interactive news, message boards and forum etc that should be accessible also there is a need for an account that offers a database. For this MySQL, most popular and powerful built on Linux operating system is used. Besides language, many other features are also there like ability to handle millions of entries all at once, flexibility and speed allowing storage of logs and big pictures, ability to scale well under heavy traffic conditions that all together makes MySQL ideal for database-intensive or e-commerce-enabled Web sites.

Customer Support

Customer support is also an important criterion while selecting a good web host service and it is equally important both for an expert as well as a layman.

Following are the essentials for a good support system:

? size of the database.

Size of the database is an important feature as it helps in providing quick search for any answer and thus helps in getting solution of any problem without even bothering customer support staff. If the database is large its easy to search for information from it. Some web host providers even provide video tutorial guide, which helps in step-by-step setting up of account even for a layman.

? efficient customer staff

In order to get fast and good response quick customer support is a must. The following are few forms of customer support:

a. Email support

b. Phone support: Generally for sales and technique aspect it is used. A well-equipped and knowledgeable staff knows and problems and provide with immediate and relevant remedy without wastage of time.

Clove Chat support: Some web host companies like Lunar pages and Globat even have live chat support for their customers, but irrespective of how many support channels a company is offering its more important that the available staff is responsive to the need.

Price calculation on basis of ratio of Disk space to Bandwidth ratio What is the amount that one must pay depends upon the disk space and bandwidth that is available with the host plan. Thus price must be ascertained keeping in mind the above two factors.

Popularity

Besides all of the above features it’s all in vain if web host is not offering an effective marketing plan. It is so because if a web host provider is not having good customers or members as well as steady growth of them, then it’s not possible for them to survive in this competitive world.

The popularity of a particular web-hosting provider can be judged by the number of awards won as well as the reviews of other websites and also from the ranking in Alexa traffic.

All the hosting providers listed on our Top 10 Cheap Web Hosting Directory are among the top 40,000 most visited websites in the world.

Trustworthiness, Speed and Uptime Guarantee

For any company if its website is not available or accessible, then it tends to not only loosing of customer but also it hampers credibility therefore its important to check if web host provider is guaranteeing at least 99% uptime. However to ensure maximum uptime, installation of redundant back-up systems is quite important “Redundant means having an alternative Internet connection on the verge of interruption of main Internet connection. It tends to minimize downtime and is a part of host provider’s management system For a matter of speed, how fast a site is depends upon the types of network connections. Other matters like routing, web server set up and local area networks also play an important part but still they are after the factor of Internet connection.

Many hosting providers still connect to the Internet through T1, or T3 connections. However the best one would be one using OC (Optical Carrier) lines.

A T1 line offers data transfer rate of 1. 5 Mbps (megabits per second), while a T3 line supplies data transfer rates of 43Mbps. OC-1 refers to a circuit that transmits 51. 85Mbps. Higher levels are multiples of that speed. Ultra-High Speed OC3 and OC12 lines offer 155Mbps and 622Mbps respectively. Some hosting providers have connections to major Internet backbones at the speed of OC48 (2488Mbps) and OC96 (4976Mbps).