According to the providers, the disk space offered varies between a megabyte and hundreds of gigabytes. For a disk space intended for a commercial website, one can find hosting services for a score around $10 dollars per month, more if one needs something larger. A firm which wants to have a bigger website can thus make it for about thirty dollars per month (taxes included) if it creates and maintains its web pages itself.



The first thing to make is to determine if one wants to have a personal or company web page. For an individual or a family it is a way of making photographs, documents, news and even videos available for friends or other members of the family. One quickly takes pleasure to do it and those who created their personal Web page are proud to have made it. For a company, it should be well understood that more and more people are using Internet to find what they need. Whatever the product which one sells or service that one offers he can have only advantages to have at least a page of presentation on Internet because Internet is like an immense index of yellow pages in which one makes keyword search.

When one decides to make a website, it is necessary to find  . The web host on which one installs his website can logically be located anywhere in the world but it is nevertheless preferable to choose it in the same country. If the website is in Canada, for example, there are strong chances that the access to the data is faster for Canadians than for people of other countries. Furthermore, there are fewer risks that the forwarded information is intercepted. On the other hand, if the personal or commercial website is in another country, the data which are there actually pass through several countries where it can be intercepted, copied or used before reaching the computer of the person who wants to read it. If one wants to put personal information on a website or make a safe commercial website, it is preferable to choose a web hosting provider as close as possible to the public concerned.

For the personal pages as well as for the commercial ones, one can find entirely free web hosting but it should be well understood that they make profitable their business either by displaying advertising on your pages or by recovering information on the visitors of your pages to resell to them thereafter. There is no 'free lunch' in this field. It is often best to pay some dollars to be quiet and sure of the service quality. The web hosting providers usually indicate to their customers that they offer space for personal or commercial websites and under which conditions. In the case of a commercial website, it is necessary to insist to have a tender containing all the costs because certain web hosting providers invoice more for the occupied disk space, according to the number of accessed files or even according to access time, whereas others demand one overall price. It is also necessary to provide for additional costs if one wants to use a safe server, to obtain a certificate of authentification, to have his own domain name, to make transactions on line, etc.

At the time of choice one can benefit from asking what technical support it is offered. It is necessary at least to be able to consult a small guide explaining how to transfer the files from your pages to the host computer. Most of the time that is done via an access ftp, in other words a standard file transfer system, but sometimes certain web hosting providers want to receive the files with the personal pages in the form of files attached to an e-mail message. For the design of a commercial website, which must represent the company image, it is sometimes preferable to call upon a web page design service which is offered by many web hosting providers; if you do it, do not forget to ask to see some examples and indicate the maximum price which you are ready to pay. Knowing these, you may consider taking a close look at Web Hosting Services and you should now be prepared to get started with your website.

Marcus Laval is a senior IT analyst with an experience of more than 20 years, who has written more articles on the web hosting market and on the highly recommended Web Hosting Services.