Website Hosting Plans – Selecting The Best Hosting Provider For You
Article by Andy Nataghi
A search on the web will reveal lots of website hosting plans from numerous companies all seeking your business at differing prices, offering slightly different packages and, of course, differing levels of support. How do you go about deciding which to go for given this overwhelming choice.
Any Commercial Plans?
Firstly you should consider whether your site is critical (is it important that it is fast and always available) and it is for business or recreational/social purposes? If your site/blog will not be commercial you may find that, for example, a Squidoo Lens or a blog on WordPress.com is all you need. These services are free, easy to setup and avoid the need to pay for a domain name and hosting.These options do limit your flexibility but can be a quick and easy way to start.
Is Price A Major Factor?
So you have decided that you want to own your own domain and to be in full control of your site, you will need to consider the range of website hosting plans available. There are a number of cheap deals around (or even free if you don’t mind advertising appearing) so you need to consider if price is the over-riding factor.
Becoming a provider of website hosting plans is quite easy as this can be achieved by “reselling” the services of a large supplier. This means that you benefit from the infrastructure provided by the large supplier but you are dependent on the reseller for support. Obviously a small reseller cannot provide the same level of support (24/7) as a large provider and this may present a particular problem if provider and user are not in the same time zone. Having said that a cheap supplier may actually provide a good service but it is a risk. However, if your site is more of a hobby it may be worthwhile trying out one of the cheap services.
Other Factors to Consider
The following factors should also be considered:
* Do you pay monthly, annually etc.?
* Can you cancel if necessary?
* Is there a money back guarantee?
* Number of domains you can have.
* Is a domain included?
* How much bandwidth are you allowed?
* How much disk space are you allowed?
* Is speed and uptime guaranteed?
* Linux or Microsoft based hosting?
* Does the Control Panel have all the functionality you need?
* How good is the support?
For more information on each of the above please visit follow the links below.
Conclusion
I believe that if your site is providing a service either commercial or non-commercial it is better to host it with a reputable company who are actually providing the hosting service. They are stable businesses with a reputation to protect and will be able to provide all the services you may need in the future. In particular they will be able to support you if you have problems and in the end this is more important than price.
About the Author
Andy Nataghi is an enthusiast and writer about all things technical and has a particular interest in Website Hosting Plans. To see more detail on the above criteria for assessing hosting providers please visit http://website-hosting-plans.com