Web Hosting : Criteria of Choosing an Ideal Web Hosting Company

Summary : Before trying to locate inexpensive, quality hosting for a site, web site owners should understand the basics of web hosting.

What is a Web Host?

A web host is a service provider that stores your web site files on a computer connected to the Internet. The term for this computer is "server".

A web hosting provider typically offers a fast Internet connection, usually hosting thousands of web sites on many servers. They essentially rents computer space, and grants your website access to the Web.

With a well-managed web host, you avoid the worry of complicated server technology and proper technical maintenance. That's the function of a good web hosting company. You can leave the technical aspect of your site to a professional, while you focus on your E-business.

Available Hosting Features

Most features offered by web hosting companies are fairly standard. The following are available in most hosting plans:

• Control Panel
  Control Panel is an interface allowing you to manage your site via the web server. From here, you can access the set-up, to update and customize your site as needed. Though cPanel is by far the most popular control panel, some hosting providers customize their own utility so that they can up-grade and expand it at will.
• Diskspace
  A vast majority of sites that don't have tons of graphics, sound and video clips, or downloadable files easily fit in 50 MB of disk space. You should always leave yourself some room for growth, and check if your provider has an expandable hosting plan in case you need to upgrade.
• Bandwidth
  Bandwidth is the amount of data transmitted or received through a unit of time. In web hosting, bandwidth is consumed when visitors make requests for files on your web site, and download them to their personal computers. Your bandwidth use is effected by the size of these files and frequency of requests for them.
• Email Account
  With POP3 email accounts you can check email from Outlook, Netscape Mail, Eudora or any other Email software.
• Scripting language
  Scripting capability basically allows your site to include more advanced, or interactive features. Most hosts use a Unix and Linux platform, and you will find PHP, Perl and CGI to be the most common scripting languages supported. It is best to choose a host that supports the latest version of each.
• Database
  If your web site is going to store large amounts of data that is dynamically accessible (like user accounts, stock prices, maps, Interactive news, message boards and forum etc.), you'll need to look for a hosting package that includes a database. MySQL is a powerful and popular database program that runs on the Linux operating system. It handles millions of entries all at once. Its flexibility and speed allows you to also store logs and pictures. MySQL is designed to scale well under heavy traffic conditions, and is ideal for database-intensive or e-commerce-enabled Web sites.

Customer Service/Support

No matter if you are an Internet expert or a novice, you need a web host with good customer support. Excellent customer support meets the following criteria :

• Extensive knowledge base
  This is particularly important for those who want quick answers without direct assistance from customer support staff. Normally a knowledge base is searchable, simplifying the process of locating your information. Some web hosting providers offer a video tutorial guiding you step-by-step in setting up your new account. This is very useful for beginners.
• Responsive customer service staff.
  If you prefer not to locate your answer from a big pool of database information, get the direct answer from someone who knows it. Direct customer support comes in a few forms.
  
  1. Email support
  2. Phone support: Normally, sales and technical support uses separate phone lines. A good phone support staff can identify your problem is and find a solution quickly.
  3. Live Chat Support : Live chat provides instant access to answers to quick or more more involved questions.

Price to Disk Space / Price to Bandwidth Ratio

Are you paying too much for your Web Hosting Plan? Having researched hundreds of web hosting companies, in general, we've come to this conclusion: the more disk space and bandwidth you get, the more you will pay each month.

Popularity

A web host might offer the best features, unbeatable customer support and reliability, but without an effective marketing plan, it will go bust. Let's face it, if a web hosting provider does not have sufficient members and the steady growth of new members, it's very difficult to survive in this highly competitive industry.

We judge the popularity of a particular web hosting provider by looking at the number of awards won, the reviews of other websites, and the Alexa traffic ranking.

All the hosting providers listed on our Top 10 Cheap Web Hosting Directory are among the top 40,000 most visited websites in the world.

Reliability, Speed and Uptime Guarantee

Nothing can hurt you more than this: your visitors come to your web site only to find that it's not accessible. You lose credibility and possibly a sale. If your web host does not guarantee at least a 99% uptime, leave now!

To ensure maximum uptime, installation of redundant back-up systems is essential. Each web host has their own management systems to minimize downtime. "Redundant" means that if any of the Internet connections are interrupted, the alternate Internet connection will take over.

We use Alertra software to monitor the uptime of each of our top 10 web hosts.

Even though routing, web server set-up, and local area networks play a part in determining the speed of a site, your site's speed depends very much on the types of network connections.

Many hosting providers still connect to the Internet through T1, or T3 connections. This is not the case for our top 10 hosts - they are using OC (Optical Carrier lines.)

A T1 line offers data transfer rate of 1.5 Mbps (megabits per second), while a T3 line can supply data transfer rates of 43Mbps. OC-1 refers to a circuit that transmits at 51.85Mbps. Higher levels are multiples of that speed. Ultra-High Speeed 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).

Overall, your ability to locate affordable, quality web hosting greatly depends upon your understand of web hosting services and the technology they offer. Armed with this information, you are better able to identify the best web host for your site's needs.