How to Choose an Ideal Web Hosting Company

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:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. Email Account

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

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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:

1. 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.

2. 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.

C) love 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 Best Web Host 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).

About Web Hosting Plans

Like choosing any other service it is often difficult to make a good informed decision that will keep you satisfied, especially of you want nothing but the best. There is a specific set of criteria that a good web hosting web plan must meet.

First, the cost. There are free web hosting services, for sure, but if you are planning to do business and other secure transactions online you need your web host service to provide you with the right kind of security, and the right kind often does not come free. Free web hosting services usually do not offer side support and frequent down-times, which is not good if you want to build an online reputation as a dependable and serious businessman.

Also, with most free web hosting services comes pop-up banners and advertisements which can be a major source of irritation for you and your clients. The good thing is that even great web hosting sites now offer space for a mere $ 3 per month, and this includes a 5 gigabyte disk a space and 50 gigabytes of bandwidth.

The kind of hosting plan that you need often depends on the amount of space for data that you require. If you are planning to create a large website better go with the unlimited disk space you that you do not run into problems once you exceed your maximum.

This goes for the bandwidth. If you are planning to send large amounts of data online or if you are expecting a large number of people to access your site at any given time, you need to have a bandwidth that you know you wont exceed. Once you exceed your bandwidth limit your site could temporarily become unavailable, which could have some nasty consequences on your business.

Just bear in mind that if you are planning to pay for a web hosting plan, you need to get your money?s worth. That means that you are provided with the right amount of bandwidth, enough disk space and of course, security. Some websites offer SSLs or Secure Sockets Layer certificates, which is very important if you are planning to conduct financial transactions on your site.

A good hosting plan should also provide you with a free domain name as well as unlimited domain names for users, which you can get for minimal cost.

Finally, a great web hosting plan should be one that is provided by a server that has a 24-hour tech support. Some web hosts will provide outsourced tech support, which is fine. However, in-house tech support is far better since the representatives here are more familiar with the system, and thus are at a better position to help you in moments of crisis.

The kind of people behind the company?s tech support often reflect the kind of people who comprise the company, therefore a web host?s tech support is a good indicator if the host is good or not. A reliable customer support team is usually a great indicator of a reliable web hosting service.

All About Cheap Web Hosting

The term cheap web hosting bears two different perceptions. Often the hosting companies are confused on whether to call their services cheap or not as it may sound to be of low quality by some. Yet the number of searches conducted everyday on Google and other search engines with the keywords ?cheap web hosting? is so massive that companies just can?t ignore this way of getting attention.

The aggressive competition in the hosting industry has led to the advertising of extremely cheap web hosting plans as a means to gain new customers.

The overall increase in the volume of the hosting industry has also made it possible for companies to achieve economies of scale with ease and thus offer services at lower rates. Fueling the growth in demand of hosting services are websites that are not only meant to market products and services, but information based websites whose source of primary income is online advertising income. The latter is a large base of Internet publishers that participates in advertising revenue sharing programs like Adsense, Chitika etc. The publishers often start with a small website and only have the means of buying cheap web hosting services for establishing their basic Internet presence.

Unfortunately, you get what you pay for stands true for cheap web hosting services too. The most basic problem and the reason why these companies are able to afford customers at such low price, is that these companies place too many websites on one shared server. While it is normal to have many websites on a shared server, but there?s an optimal limit, which would be based on the hardware profile of that server. Very often this limit is exceeded by cheap web hosting companies resulting in slow access, or intermittent downtime for their customer?s websites.

Cheap web hosting services also have problems with providing speedy customer support and telephone support is mostly inexistent.

Another key point is that many of the tempting cheap web hosting deals start to loose their attraction once your requirements increase. Because you will realize that these companies try to over charge any add-ons you may require later on. Quality hosting companies will not only offer free extra?s like pre-installed scripts, database connections etc but will have more economical pricing for add-ons too.

In the long run, it is much better to move away from any of the cheap web hosting provider you are hosting with and move on to a business hosting firm. This will ensure that you have better hosting tools and features at your disposal. You will also enjoy better customer service from a company that is able to hire staff with high technical expertise. What more, your website visitors will enjoy faster access speeds and great uptime.

Choosing Your Web Host

As more and more people are turning to the Internet and making websites for a variety of reasons, choosing a web hosting service that is suitable to their needs is very important as there are so many web hosting companies that offer several types of web hosting services.

Usually, people will prefer a web hosting service that is given to them without any cost. This is the most popular web hosting service, the free web host. Because of its popularity a newbie in website development will have a hard time to tell how this particular free web host is different from the other. This article will show you how to choose a free web host for your own website.

There are four things to consider in comparing free web hosting services. These are the amount of space available for your website, the limits on the file size and type that are to be uploaded to your website, access to the file transfer protocol, and server reliability.

Probably the most important thing to consider when choosing a free web host is the amount of space allocated by the hosting service for your site. This is important since obviously, the more space you have for your website, the better, as you can put as much details in it as you want. Usually these free hosting services offer only 5MB of space and you have to note if this is enough for all your pictures, videos, and other thingamajigs you want to put in your website.

The second consideration to make is server reliability. People hate clicking on a link and then are taken to a page that says server error or something like it. Nowadays, access to information in the fastest time possible plays a very important role as people prefer instant access to information. By considering the reliability and speed of the server of that particular web hosting company will assure that the visitors to your site will be directed to it in the fastest time.

Another consideration to make is the limitation that the web hosting service has as regards to the types and sizes of the files that will be uploaded for your website. Free hosts usually put a limit on this since their services are shared with other people who also need free web hosting like you but there are some hosts that will give you enough freedom to create a presentable webpage so it is just a matter of research on your part to find these free web host companies.

FTP access is usually offered with the free service that web hosting providers give. This is very useful for beginners as you just choose the files as if you were just attaching them to your email and uploading it to your website. If you are just a beginner, choosing a web host with FTP access will greatly work to your advantage.

There are, of course, other considerations to make when choosing a free web host but the four considerations mentioned above will give you the most basic criteria for comparison between free web hosting services.

FATCOW

FatCow has been providing web hosting services since 1998. They are keen on keeping things simple and easy to use, especially for new businesses. For those who are not ready to launch a full scale web site, they offer a plan called the MiniMoo.Coupled with great service and outstanding customer support, they offer a sound service that's backed by their exclusive any-time money back guarantee

Price Value
FatCow offers a one plan fits all web hosting service. For $5.50 per month, you will get unlimited space, transfer, free web site builder, e-commerce capabilities, blogs, forums, statistics, user-friendly installers for open source scripts and much more.

You will also get a free domain name with your purchase, along with great features such as unlimited add-on domains, ftp, web analytics, site diagnostics, FrontPage extensions, PHP, CGI, MySQL, Python, advertising credits and much more!

Performance & Reliability
You will enjoy their multi-gigabit connections on a load-balanced platform, which features data backups daily. They also have UPS power backups and generators for power reliability. The entire infrastructure is monitored and secured 24/7.

Support
Whether you want to call them in on their toll free number, use the live chat or send in an e-mail support ticket you will be able to get a hold of their well-trained support staff any time of the day.

Control Panel
FatCow uses a custom built control panel that's built with ease of use in mind. You will be able to manage all aspects of your site under their control panel. It's very easy and color coded for easy identification of status of certain services.

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POWWEB

Starting a website with PowWeb is easy and affordable. Our simple "One Plan" package offers a complete All-in-One hosting solution with plenty of disk space, bandwidth and additional features. All sites will reside on their "Load Balanced Technology" Platform.

Features

• UNLIMITED Disk Space
• UNLIMITED Data Transfer
• FREE Domain
• Host Unlimited Domains
• MySQL, PHP, CGI
• SSL, FTP, Stats
• Point & Click Site Builder
• $75 in Yahoo & Google Ads Credits
• E-Commerce Included
• FrontPage/Dreamweaver ready
• 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee

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IPAGE

iPage is an older provider that has recently caught our attention along with our readers. They're so good, that they've earned a very good spot on our list :) Plans start at $3.50 per month and you can expect user-friendly interface that is packed with web site templates, site builders and free scripts.

Price Value
iPage offers great price value in that for only $3.50 per month you'll get unlimited disk space, bandwidth, security suite, site building tools, domain name and a bunch of other stuff such as free setup and instant activation. Not much more you can ask for!

Performance & Reliability
iPage takes downtime very seriously and have come up with a few measures to ensure its kept to a minimum. iPage monitors their servers 24/7/365 through an in-house monitoring system, which will notify their techs immediately to have them work on issues before they become extended.

Support
iPage offers technical support via telephone, e-mail and live chat 24/7/365. They also have a very extensive knowledge base for self-help.

Control Panel
iPage doesn't use the industry standard cPanel control panel. Instead they use H-Sphere. You will be able to take care of all aspects of your hosting account through the H-Sphere control panel.

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IPOWER

IPOWER has established itself as a leader in the web hosting industry, providing a comprehensive suite of online services for small and medium-sized businesses worldwide. With IPOWER, you can feel confident that you will receive rock-solid hosting with the customer service you expect and deserve.

Features

Pro plan for only $3.95 per month

• UNLIMITED Hosting Space
• UNLIMITED File Transfer
• 1 Free Personalizad Domain
• UNLIMITED Domain Allowed
• CGI-BIN + PHP 4 & 5 Support
• Perl Support
• MySQL Databases
• $50 Google AdWords™ Credit
• $25 Yahoo! Search Marketing Credit
• 2,500 POP3 Email Accounts

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