Nowadays inexpensive web hosting is very crucial to the online success of any website. Different companies offer hosting accounts for different applications with different features and it is not easy to compare an apple to a carrot choosing a good host becomes rather difficult. Some hosting offers may look inexpensive at the first instance but actually when you go for them you will find either the server downtime is more than acceptable, email accounts do not work properly, cgi-bin is not there, you needed a PHP host and it turns out be a ASP host or any similar issues.
To avoid these kinds of mishaps you need to know certain things about the right web hosting. A reasonably priced affordable hosting package costs about $ 7 to $ 12 per month. When you are selecting a host for your website you should take in consideration various factors. If you miss something thing that was required you will have to move to another host later on leading to wastage of time and money. So take a wise decision at the first instance and you will find that hosting your domain or domains is really cheap. Ask yourself a few questions before deciding you hosting server.
1. Number of Domains: If you want to host more than one domain, your hosting package should allow that number of domains. Generally having an additional hosting account for each new domain you host is expensive. Some hosting companies offer free domain name with hosting package which means a free domain name registration with hosting package is provided.
2. Unlimited Emails Accounts: How many email accounts will you need? Many hosting services allow unlimited email accounts. The host should not have a reputation of having long queues for the emails. This generally happens if the hosting server is being used for bulk mailing.
3. Web Space: How much space you need to host all your web pages and database. Generally 250 MB is sufficient for a medium sized website. However most of the hosts give you web space in the range of 1GB-500GB.
4. frontpage hosting: Is your website HTML based? You need to check out if it supports FrontPage extensions.
5. PHP/ MySQL or ASP/ MS SQL support: Are you using any of the ASP, PHP shopping carts or custom build website using any of these languages? For a PHP website you should take a php hosting or mysql hosting package. The server should offer support for PHP preferably the latest version. For an ASP based website the server should support ASP. Does your website need a database? If yes which one? For a PHP website in most cases the database is MySQL and for a ASP website the database is MS SQL.
6. Unlimited Subdomains: It is good to have a hosting package that supports unlimited sub domains. Sub domains are useful in organizing and optimizing your site.
7. cgi bin: Does your website offer cgi bin for the various domains that you host?
8. ftp hosting: FTP access is very important as well. It allows you to upload and download files to and from your host without logging into control panel. Also ftp access can be given for specific folders allowing easier division of work among people who work on the website.
9. Cpanel or Plesk control Panel: Web hosting control panel allows you to manage features of your hosting account. Creating FTP accounts, email accounts, databases etc. Cpanel hosting is most common.
10. Customer support: How quickly the customer responds to trouble tickets? Is a tech support phone number available? Before buying a hosting package try sending a general enquiry and see the response time. It is not necessary that they will respond as quickly once you become their customer but it certainly gives an idea.
11. Other Software: You may be interested in free shopping cart, word press. Site builders, templates, forum software that many of hosting packages offer.
12. secure server capabilities: If you setup a shopping cart and people pay by credit cards you need this to avoid unauthorized interception.
13. FAST servers: The quickest way to lose visitors -- and therefore customers -- is to make them wait too long for your web page to load! Your host should have at least a T3 connection to the major Internet backones.
14. server logs: Your hosting control panel should provide you access to logs in order to analyze your web site traffic. This will help you to optimize the website and get an idea how your website is doing.
THL Interactive offers inexpensive hosting for business and personal website with a wide range of features and softwares at an affordable price. Check out the various hosting plans offered by THL Interactive an affordable web hosting and online services company at www.tlhinteractive.com. In addition the customized web design and website marketing services are also provided at a small additional price.
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