But how do you HONESTLY know `which is the finest web host?
To begin with, you need to break it down to what you need, which is either 3 families of hosting: Shared web hosting, Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting or dedicated web hosting.
But you are most likely after shared hosting, which is entry and medium level hosting for small to medium sites. Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting and Dedicated server hosting are both more expensive but can handle the resource demands on more huge sites.
The Best Web Host's Control Panel:
This is the display that will let you tweak your site settings and even view your visitor statistics, such as which web site they came from, which country they are in and some other details. Without this, everything becomes 20 times harder. Creating an email account to use will suddenly take an hour of research instead of 20 easy seconds and will suddenly necessitate almost programmer level skill requirements without this simple interface. Your Control Panel makes doing any of this, easy for absolutely anyone. Only go with hosts offering ?cPanel? (or possibly even, ?DirectAdmin?). If they don't offer these, look somewhere else.
The Best Web Host's Support:
Everyone wants decent web hosting support that will answer their questions fast. But if you are paying $3 a month, you can't expect support that's going to be that good. But some support should be available. Check if they have a phone number to call (most won't ? which isn't necessary a bad thing), but if they have a ?Live Support? chat button, that's a great plus, and a very valuable thing to have available to you in case you need to contact them quickly.
The Best Web Host's Uptime and Reliability
If they are clearly not offering a 99.9% Uptime guarantee, look somewhere else. Downtime is aggravating and costly for anyone advertising their websites. Web travelers that come to your site when it's down, will be very turned off to to returning. The better way to learn of of their reliability is to read reviews and other people's views. However a fast way to test speed (but not quite dependable) is to see how fast the web host's own web page loads up for you, which can give you an sign of what kind of speed your site can expect.
The Best Web Host's Free Scripts
If the web hosting company you want to run with is using cPanel, they will very often provide you with over 50+ free easily installable scripts through an addon known as ?Fantastico?. This is quite useful, as it holds entire e-commerce shopping carts, CMS systems, forum software and heaps of extras, all installable with one mouse click. Not absolutely required, but certainly comes in useful.
The Best Web Host's Per Month Pricing
Now if you are like the majority of people. You want good value, and don't want to use up a lot of money on web hosting. Web Hosting has become a ?commodity? item with plenty of competition. You can even find hosts offering hosting for a measly $3 a month. However, you can expect downtime and slowness and emotional distress with these confusingly cheap hosts. End result, not worth saving a couple of bucks with these cheaper than chips hosts. Go for something around the $8-12 mark. Yes that's over 3 times the amount of our $2 counterparts. But this means the web host can afford to give you good support and put your account on a server that will always be up, and actually run fast.
In reality, you TRULY pay far more with a super-cheap web host because of downtime, unusual slowness, lost visitors and lost revenue, poor support, and your own frustration when you check and see your website is down and your host is out of reach to help ? or don't offer any. Web hosting is really something that will attack you in the behind if you go with the cheapest is best mentality and that is the solid truth.
You don't need a Web host to develop and design a site. You can do it all from your personal computer. However, if you want to publish your site for the world to see, you need some Web server space. Fortunately, server space is abundant and inexpensive. This topic helps you sort through your options.
A Web host owns (or rents) the computer that serves the files of your Web site to your visitors, usually in exchange for a monthly fee. You don't have to cancel your current Internet account to hire a Web host. In fact, many Web hosts don't offer Internet service provider (ISP) service.
Those that do need to be local, or it isn't worth it for you. The great thing about your neighborhood ISP is that it's in your neighborhood, and it gives you a local dial-up number. You don't want to have to dial in to Albuquerque whenever you want to browse the Web (unless, of course, you live in Albuquerque).
There's a good chance you already have a Web host, even if you don't know it. Many standard Internet accounts come with a healthy amount of server space for personal Web pages. So, the first step in choosing a Web host is to contact your ISP. Find out how much server space comes with your account. If the answer is none, you might want to inform your customer service representative that many of their direct competitors offer this benefit to their subscribers for a lot less than you're currently paying.
I want to use my Web site for commercial purposes. Can I host my site on the personal Web space that comes with my Internet service?
Why would you want to? For one thing, your ISP usually assigns you a generic Web address, which doesn't make your business look very professional. For another, you don't need the typical lags in response time that you find on the servers of large ISPs. Plus, commercial sites are probably against your ISP's terms of service, and you don't need the hassle of them closing down your site along with your personal email account and Internet connection.
If you'd prefer not to use your personal server space for your site, just go to your favorite search engine, and look up Web hosting to begin your research. Don't be surprised if your results number in the millions.
There are many, many, many Web hosts out there. You can't possibly research them all. You need to narrow your optionsand fast. A good way to start is with the names that you recognize: Yahoo!, Earthlink, Netfirms, perhaps also your phone or cable company. If they don't have what you need or want, work your way down the list.
Every Web site is different, of course, and only you can make the choice about the right Web host for your particular site. That said, in general, here are a few qualities of good Web hosts:
1) Reasonable monthly charge. Shop around, and see what the competitors are offering. Expect to pay between $10 and $25 a month for a typical personal or small business site. Pay less, and your Web host probably makes up the difference by giving you terrible customer support or tacking advertisements onto your site. Pay more, and you're probably buying services and features that you don't need.
2) Domain name registration (preferably free). Many of the better Web hosts offer to register your Web site's domain name for you. Some even front you the yearly $35 registration service charge. Keep an eye out for these hosts. They're worth it, even if they tack on a setup charge (as long as it's less than $35).
3) Reasonable (or no) setup charge. Some Web hosts tack on a special, one-time service charge to set up your account. Others do not. Many perfectly reputable and reliable Web hosts charge setup fees. Many do not. Those that don't charge setup fees often make up their money elsewhere, so read the fine print. If you go for a fee-charging service, don't pay more than $35, or you're probably being soaked. And if you can catch a fee-charging Web host during one of its "fee waived" promotional periods, do it.
4) Upgrade plans. Your site is successful. It grows. You want your Web host to grow with you. Ideally, your host should offer several levels of service at reasonable price points. Start with the cheapest plan and work your way up.
5) Reliable customer service (preferably by phone). You need customer service. Period. And don't fall for the usual 24/7 customer-service sales pitch. Any fool with an email account can advertise 24/7 customer service. But is the fool actually reading the emailah, that's the rub. You want a toll-free phone number for customer support. If you don't have 24/7 access to a live human being by telephone, then you don't have 24/7 customer support. It's far better to go with a Web host who offers toll-free phone support during normal business hours than a host who offers 24/7 support by email.
6) Server space. Exactly how much server space do you need? You can figure this out pretty easily. Find out the combined file size of your Web site by examining the properties of its local root folder. If your site is 5 MB, then you need at least 5 MB of server space. Generally, you don't need huge amounts of server space, unless your site includes lots of heavy multimedia files, such as MP3s.
7) Bandwidth limits. Your Web host measures bandwidth, or the amount of data its computers push to the visitors of your site over a period of time. Typically, you get a monthly limit, and, if you exceed your cap, your host charges you extra. A good data-transfer baseline for a typical personal or small-business Web site is 1 GB. Roughly speaking, one gigabyte of data transfer equals 20,000 page viewsthat's one person viewing one page of your site 20,000 times, or 5,000 people viewing one page of your site four times, or 20,000 people viewing one page of your site one time. It's hard to know exactly how much bandwidth you need, so start low. If you exceed your limit regularly, consider upgrading your plan. Keep in mind: If you offer a total of 1 GB of MP3s on your site, you can exceed 1 GB of bandwidth very quickly.
8) POP3 email accounts. You may or may not want extra email accounts for your site. But if you want them, go for a Web host that provides them. Generally, you want POP3 email instead of Web-based email. POP3 email works with client software such as Microsoft Outlook and Eudora, which let you jump on the Internet quickly, download your mail, and answer it offline. Web-based email requires you to be online to write and receive messages. Many Web hosts count the amount of email that you send and receive over their servers as part of your overall transfer limit, so be sure to take this factor into account.
9) Streaming audio/video and other media. If you want to host streaming audio or video files on your site, or even if you want to display Flash animations and other common media types, your Web host needs to be set up to do this. You don't need special service to host Web images such as JPEG, GIF, and PNG.
10) FrontPage extensions. Heaven forbid, but if your Web site uses the stupid special effects that come with Microsoft FrontPage, you should find a Web host that doesn't offer FrontPage extensions. This way, the dumb things won't work, and the quality of your site will improve dramatically.
11) CGI, server-side scripting, and database access. If your site uses server-side technology to connect to a database, you need a Web host who is set up to do this. You don't have to worry about this level of service if your site sticks to the client side: HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. All the projects in this book are client-side only.
12) Site reports. You want a host that gives you access to the data that the Web server collects about the visitors to your site. You want to see where they're from, what browsers they're using, what pages they visit most often, and which sections of the site they seem to be missing. You don't want this information for evil purposes. You want it to help you improve your site. Definitely check into what kind of site reporting tools the host offers.
One feature that you definitely don't need is a shopping cart application, "free" or otherwise. Shopping carts that come with Web hosting plans are generic, overpriced, feature-poor, difficult to customize, and next to impossible to integrate into your site.
If you're serious about launching a Web-based retail storefront, you need to hire a programming team to develop a shopping cart application for you.
Both James Collinsworth & Adrien Brody are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
James Collinsworth has sinced written about articles on various topics from Web Development, Personal Desktop and Internet Marketing. About the author:James Collinsworth has been online since 1996, and has time-tested many different web hosts and gives away Discount Web Hosting coupons for time-tested quality web hosts. Visit his website for more information:. James Collinsworth's top article generates over 3600 views. to your Favourites.
Adrien Brody has sinced written about articles on various topics from Health, Cosmetic Surgery and Breast Enlargements. Adrien Brody () is a webmaster which specializes in providing website hosting solutions for businesses. If you'. Adrien Brody's top article generates over 165000 views. to your Favourites.