Web Site: How to Choose a New Hosting Service?

Which hosting service you should choose depends primarily on how much traffic you expect, what you're using your site for, and what you're willing to pay. The three main kinds of hosting services available are:

1. Internet service providers (ISPs). Almost every ISP includes web hosting as part of its basic service. Often, this hosting is bare-bones and offers little beyond the most basic features. But many ISPs, for a modest monthly fee, offer a lot more. For example, some ISP provides 200 MB of disk space, 10 GB of data transfers, 30 email addresses, and 24/7 service.

2. Free web hosting services. Free hosting services such as Yahoo GeoCities (http:// geocities.yahoo.com), Angelfire (http://www.angelfire.lycos.com), or the hosting you get with your ISP won't offer as much server space or data transfers as paid services, but you'll often find web based site building and blog building tools. In return, you may have to agree to put advertising on your web site.

3. Paid hosting services. Paid services such as Verio (http://www.verio.com) or paid Yahoo services (GeoCities Plus or Pro, or Yahoo Web Hosting) provide lots of storage space for your web site, have multiple and redundant connections to the Internet's "backbone" (which means visitors will get speedy access to your site), provide solid technical support, and may offer a variety of extras, such as extra email accounts or prebuilt "shopping carts" for people who want to build simple ecommerce sites.

So how do you decide? The biggest choice to make is whether to go with a free or pay service. If you don't care about having your own domain, and the site is only for personal use, free hosting services are a pretty good deal. If you're using the web site for business purposes, especially for ecommerce, opt for a paid hosting service. You'll be able to use your own domain name, and you'll get the speed, extra storage space, and better technical support that a business site requires. If you're creating a personal site using your own domain name, you'll also have to go with a paid service.

How do you pick a paid hosting service? Here are some tips on what to look for:

1. How much server space will you get? Expect at least 200 MB. Although individual web pages may not take up a lot of space, you may want to host files for download (pictures, PDFs, music, and the like).

2. Can you use your own domain name? If a service doesn't support domain name hosting, look elsewhere.

3. How many email addresses do you get? This is particularly important if you're running a business. You'll want email addresses that end in your domain name, and enough addresses for all of your employees, plus general addresses for customer support, sales, and so on. If nothing else makes sure you can buy extra addresses later if you need them. Also, make sure that your paid hosting service does not limit the size or number of emails you send and receive each month. Bear in mind that some services combine your email storage with your hosting storage when calculating the total amount of storage available to you, so a service offering you 200 MB of combined space may not be such a great deal.

4. How much total bandwidth are you allowed? Some sites limit the amount of bandwidth you're given each month (that is, how much data can be transferred from your site to visitors, be it pages they're viewing or files they're downloading). If you have a lot of visitors each month who view lots of pages or download files you've posted, you'll have to pay extra. Find out what the monthly limit is, and how much extra you'll pay if you exceed it. There may also be a limit on how much you can upload to your site.

5. How long has the hosting service been in business? You want a company with a long track record, that's been at the same location for three to five years and has a good rating with the Better Business Bureau.

6. What kind of technical support does the hosting service offer? If you're running a business site, you'll want 24/7 technical support via phone, email, and maybe instant messaging. Look for a solid knowledge base or FAQ list so that you can troubleshoot some problems yourself. Test technical support: call the support line and note how long you're kept on hold, the professionalism of the techs, and the quality of their advice.

7. What types of ecommerce features does it have? If you're going to sell anything from your site, make sure the service offers built in shopping cart software, will let you easily build online product catalogs, and offers secure credit card authorization. Check the prices for these services as well.

8. What kinds of web building tools does it offer and support? If you don't plan to create web pages on your own, look for tools that do more than just let you build very basic web sites. And if you use specialized tools, such as FrontPage extensions make sure the hosting service supports them.

9. Does it support features you plan to add to your site, such as blogs, RSS feeds, or streaming audio and video? If so, does the company provide the appropriate tools and technical support?

10. Do you have CGI-bin access? CGI scripts are used for a variety of interactive features for web sites. Even if you don't think you need CGI-bin access, you might eventually, so make sure that your hosting service offers it.

11. Is the hosting service connected to the Internet's backbone via multiple high speed connections? Multiple connections via T3 and optical lines not only guarantee speedy access to your visitors; they also guarantee that your site will stay live if one connection goes down, because your hosting service has backup access to the Internet.

There are far too many paid hosting services out there to include them all here, use the suggestion above as a starting point for making your decision.