Are you planning to launch a website? Or planning to open a web hosting company? In any case, you need to understand certain things.

Here is what you need to know about web hosting:

1) An internet service provider who has more than one server, on which files are uploaded and can be viewed on the internet, is known as a web host.

2) Web hosting is of several types ? free hosting, image hosting, shared hosting, clustered hosting, reseller hosting, virtual private server hosting, dedicated hosting and collocated hosting.

3) Most of the online customers have their own domain name and in order for the domain to be visible online, it has to be configured on Domain Name Servers, which enables rest of the internet to see the domain's name. It is similar to the telephone directory, the main difference being that it has IP address and a fixed domain name.

4) Support for UNIX based web hosts in higher than for Windows based web hosts. UNIX has been around longer than Windows and has been the primary operating system that internet servers have been hosted to. Most internet protocols like IP and TCP were developed on UNIX. Moreover, UNIX servers seem to be more stable than windows servers. In case anyone requires uploading a script written specifically for Windows server; he /she would require a Windows web host to do that.

5) Every web hosting account has a control panel. Some of them are good and some bad. Presently, most web hosting companies offer very good control panel services. Control panel has lot of videos which show how to add email addresses, password protection and other things which is needed for the web hosting account.

6) Web hosting requires expertise and technical knowledge in several internet procedures and protocols. In case of requirements to run scripts like address books, blog scripts etc, the web hosting server provides support to the users.

7) The main things to look for in a web hosting service is to see that the company is offering a minimum of 500 MB hard drive space, random amount of blah and bandwidth. It is best to ask friends and search online before selecting the best web hosting services. One should look for hosts that have control panel and at least 1000MB of bandwidth and 250MB of space.

8) Before selecting a web hosting see whether the plan you choose accommodates your present needs and takes care of your future growth or not. There will be relatively minimum amount of difference in the cost for a 30GB and 60GB disk space, so it's better to go in for 60GB hard disk.

9) Before selecting a service provider, make sure they give you the required amount of bandwidth. Basic plans offer 100GB of bandwidth and premium plans offer unlimited bandwidth. Always check out the company's user acceptable policy.

10) Depending on the size of your company, you may require 25, 40 or more email accounts. The cheap web hosting provider should be able to accommodate your current and future needs of email accounts. Also look for providers that offer a range of email tools, like auto responders, mailing lists, ability to manage email accounts, spam filtering and custom mail filtering.