Step by Step Procedure to Select the Best Web Host for You

Choosing a host for your web-site is no small thing! Once committed to one, it will become very difficult to move your business elsewhere - not to mention the damage that can be done to your business if you make the wrong choice. This makes it very important to “get it right the first time”.

In this article I will tell you everything about what you need to know about web hosting and will help you in noting down your requirements. So let’s start…

Paid server or Free hosting?

If you want to build a professional business site than it is highly recommended that YOU SHOULD choose paid server. If you just want a personal site than you can choose either a paid or free server. So which one do you want ? This article will mostly deal with Paid web hosting but is equally useful for those who are looking to have Free hosting. You are also encouraged to visit Free Web Hosting page to get more information on Free Web Hosting sites.

So let’s start from Commercial Web Hosts

I am assuming that we are looking to target 10,000 visitors every month, which is a average number, if you think that this is too much than still you should keep in mind that we are thinking for the long term, and the traffic will get increased.

How much do you want to pay (monthly fees to the service provider)?

Well it is better if you DO NOT COMPROMISE ON THE PRICE of web hosting. Don’t worry, there is so much competition that price of web hosting has touched rock bottom and almost everyone charges the same. Anyway you will never have to give more than $30/month for a average 10,000 visitor/month site. So let’s come to the MORE important factors.

Web Host should be reliable and fast!

Many people don’t even think about this factor but I think this is very crucial aspect of web hosting. Make sure that it is functional all the time. It should be up round the clock. On an average you want the host which remains up 99+% time up. Make sure to ask this via email from the host provider which you are interested in. What’s the point of having a wonderful site when no one is able to access it!

How much disk space you want?

It depends on what do you want to host. If you are providing lot’s of downloads from your server than you need lot’s of space otherwise 500 MB disk space will be alright. Remember that your mail account space will also come into this space and you want to keep at least 200 MB space for your mail accounts.

I have seen people managing in less than 25 MB space as they hardly keeps too many images on there sites and have less than 20 HTML pages. If this is your case, than you can take 25/50 MB space. It is always better to take more space than you need as you will always be expanding in future.

How much bandwidth you want?

BANDWIDTH is the amount of data transfer when a visitor visits your site. Say some person visits 4 pages of my site (total size 345 KB) than he used 345 KB. Now let’s calculate how much Bandwidth you need.

10,000 Visitors X 1 MB per visitor = 10 GB of Bandwidth per month. Again this is a lot more than what you will probably need. If you are tight on budget than feel free to make it 5 GB or even less but remember if on 25th of the month your site crosses this limit than your website won’t be accessible for the remaining days of the month. It is important to monitor your site Bandwidth.

What kind of scripting and database you are looking for in your web host?

Again, If you are really looking for more than a simple HTML site than you should make sure that the web host is providing FTP, PHP, Perl CGI-BIN access, SSI, .htaccess, telnet, SSH crontabs to you. This are fairly basic things.

FTP helps you in transferring files, where as PERL/PHP will help you to provide interaction to the user. SSL is for security purpose, cron is for scheduling jobs, htaccess is for customizing errors. You can know more about them in articles.

How Many POP email account you want?

You definitely need few email accounts like contact@yourdomain.com and admin@yourdomain.com other than your personal ids. Make sure to get all the details about email account like how many accounts you are allowed to have, do the allow forwarding emails and whether you can access them from Outlook/Thunderbird.

Technical Support!

After making a probable list of the hosts, feel free to ask all your queries. This will make you clarify things better and also allows you to know how fast and reliable is there technical support. If the are taking too much time in replying than may be you want to try some other provider after all you don’t want to wait for 4 days for there reply when your site or database gets crashed!

Other than these you also SHOULD look for:

How many Sub domains you want?

You may want to create sub domains like service.yourdomain.com so make sure that the host provides you this. Normally all of them do provide this option but still why take a risk.

which Server - Linux/Windows?

If you are looking to run ASP scripts than you have to go for servers running Windows otherwise it is always better to choose cheaper, more stable and feature-laden Unix systems running the Apache server. I am hosting this site on BSD, another variant of Linux OS. It is highly advisable to choose these Unix servers as they also provide high level of customizability.

Plans?

Web hosts provide various PAYING plans like monthly/quarterly/annually and normally annually looks cheaper than monthly (total for 12 months) but it is advisable to choose monthly for a new web host. Let’s test it first and than you can always upgrade your plan to yearly afterwards. Again make sure to ask them and clarify all your queries. Don’t make your own assumptions or get satisfied early. Also some sites charge Setup fees. Make sure to verify this.

What is the reputation of host provider (to me this is very important)?

It is highly advisable that you should do a good research on the reputation of your web host. What others think about your host. It is better to not blindly follow what the reviews that web hosts write on there sites. Mostly they are fake. Try to get independent reviews or ask people personally like your friends. You can also check on forums as you will get independent and more correct reviews there. And of course allwebhosts is all about them only.

FINAL WORDS.

So you must have got a good view of what you want and what you can get. Now you can start your search for the best web hosts for your needs. on allwebhosts we had provide you a huge list of web hosts which are hugely popular to the hosts which are really cheap to the hosts which we think that are offering best offers. Make sure to find the best one for you and Don’t forget to get all the details about them before selecting anyone. BEST OF LUCK!

For More articles, you are welcome to visit - Web Hosting Articles.

I am Arpit, the webmaster of the site All Web Hosts. I am a computer engineer and enjoy working in front of computers. I like to spend my time building websites and participating in various forums.

April 30, 2008 | Filed Under Web Hosting Articles 
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