For commercial sites, free hosting is a waste of time. Your users are exposed to
annoying pop-up advertisements every time they come to your page and you don’t
even get a real business URL. No ones going to remember your web address if they
have to type something like SomeFreeHosting.com/some_site.
The best method is to choose a cheaper host at the beginning and move up as your
business grows.
Here are some of the things you should look for when choosing a web host.
Uptime and speed: A web host should be reliable, it should be fast and it
should guarantee its uptime i.e. the time when your site is functional and
available for access to your visitors. Look for a minimum uptime of 99.5% or
higher.
Bandwidth: Bandwidth refers to the bytes of data transferred from your
site to visitors when they browse your site. Look for the exact amount you will
get per month with your package. It is a always a good move to stay away from
the hosts which offer you unlimited bandwidth because that is surely an
unfeasible claim. Your host has to pay for the bandwidth usage and unlimited
bandwidth is surely a false claim.
To give you an idea most new sites that that do not offer heavy downloads
would require between 1-3GB of bandwidth per month. However your traffic
requirements will grow over time so it is wise to choose a wide margin.
Disk space: Again if you are not planning to store heavy files, you will
hardly require beyond 5-10 MB though most of the good hosts offer you space much
more than that. Do not go for “Unlimited Space” calls. However keep in mind the
future. You may like to expand. But consideration of the space should not be a
primary factor.
Technical support: Your host should provide you with technical support
round the clock including weekends. You can check them by mailing on weekends
and find how long do they take to respond. Apart from speed they should be able
to provide you competent support. I would always prefer a host that also offers
live support and phone support apart from email support.
Scripts: When you develop a website, you will need FTP, PHP, Perl,
CGI-BIN access, SSI, .htaccess, telnet, SSH crontabs etc. Make sure that your
host provides all of these features in the package. Check to see if these
facilities are provided. Your host should have listed these in the features of
the package.SSL (secure server), MySQL, Shopping Cart are needed for a business
website. If your host does not provide you these in the package, it is not worth
joining.
Moreover you should also have features like Email, Autoresponders, POP3, Mail
Forwarding so that you can have an email address on your domain
Control Panel: This is the interface which allows you to do things like
add, delete, and manage your email addresses, and change passwords for your
account. These are common maintenance chores that every webmaster performs on a
regular basis.
Additional Domains/Subdoamins: You should look for these options if you
plan to host more than one website or are likely to do in near future. I had to
change my host as previous one would not allow hosting of additional domains.
Server Type: In comparison to Windows Uniix based servers are cheaper,
more stable and feature-laden. However for asp script, a Windows based server is
more desirable.
Fee Factor: This obviously is very important. There are hosts which would
charge you $25 per month and are provide you restricted features whereas better
services are offered by others at $6 per month.
A costlier host need not be better and if the features you desire are provided
by a reliable cheaper host then it is wise to choose the later.
I would advise you not to go for annual payment plan in the beginning. Try the
host with monthly plans first and when sure of worthiness and reliability, move
to annual plans because annual plans allow you to save money.
If you happen to buy from a reseller, do investigate the actual company he
represents. Resellers sometime offer even a better bargain than their company.
Terms and Conditions: Always read the terms and conditions. There may be
special restrictions on what you can or cannot have on your site. Just find out.
Arun Pal Singh is an internet marketer,web author who runs website http://www.homeforprofits.com to help budding online entrepreneurs with information and ready made products. Visit http://www.homeforprofits.com to find how his ebooks, softwares, audios, website building material, traffic strategies and training videos and information can provide the leverage that your business needs to grow and expand.
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