This is not exactly a "top 10" list, as all of the following
things could easily be listed as the most important
consideration. Individuals, small companies and big corporations
all need to consider the same things when choosing a hosting
package.
The overall "tip" here is that you need to get accurate
information to make comparisons among hosts. Therefore, each
individual tip is another, separate aspect of the hosting
relationship that you need to investigate. You should take them
all seriously. 1. Traffic ("data transfer" or "bandwidth")? - These terms refer
to the amount of information, measured in bytes, that is
delivered from your website to visitors. Although you will hear
about "unlimited bandwidth", check to see if the same
terminology used for marketing purposes is reflected in the
contract. In other words, read the contract before signing on
the dotted line. Unless you will be uploading photo archives or
using your site to swap large files, your small- to mid-size
website should normally use no more than 3GB of bandwidth
monthly. Watch out for "overage" charges (per additional GB,
usually) and consider upgrading your account if the site traffic
increases. 2. Disk space? - Apply the same skeptical approach to the
"unlimited disk space" deals, as you did to the claims about
traffic above. Again, the majority of small to mid-size sites
need 10-20MB of web space at most, so unless 500MB or "unlimited
space" is part of the basic package, don't bite. You can easily
determine how much storage you need by checking your file sizes
and adding them up - all the HTML pages (which are small) plus
all the images (some of which can be big). 3. Uptime ("reliability") – The minimum figure for uptime should
be 99%. Today, in fact, that is the minimum advertised amount,
as 99.5% or more is referred to all the time. Many people would
consider this the most important consideration.
4. Tools and security (FTP, PHP, SSI, etc.)? – Some hosts require
getting prior approval to install various scripts like CGI or
PHP. You would be less constrained with a host that does not
make you wait for approval. To properly maintain databases, set
up security measures and otherwise customize your site, you need
the full tool set. Once you find out what you get in the way of
tools, press a bit further and find out about restrictions on
their use, if any. 5. Email? – What's the use of having a custom-named domain for
your business if you continue using Hotmail or other web-based
mail applications? Every hosting plan will include e-mail
services, allowing you to look and sound like a "real company"
with its own e-mail addresses. The quality of such add-ons as
auto-responders, mail filters and mailing list managers will
vary among potential hosts. Don't forget to verify that you will
also have "webmail" (web-based access to your mail server) and
make sure to evaluate the anti-spam tools that are available.
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Amy Armitage is the head of Business Development for Lunarpages
(http://www.lunarpages.com/). Lunarpages provides quality web
hosting from their US-based hosting facility. They offer a
wide-range of services from dedicated server hosting and managed
solutions to shared and reseller hosting plans.
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