Points to Clear When Selecting a Webhosting Service Provider

There are several types of hosting available, which are mentioned, below-:

Free Web hosting.

People whose sites are quite small with less traffic generally use this type of hosting. Examples of sites using free hosting are personal sites about one’s family or hobbies. However such type of hosting is not at all recommended for any business, promoting or selling a product, or even for sites with much traffic. Also in this case one can not use his/her domain name for his/her site rather one has to use a domain and site path provided by the company.

Virtual or shared web hosting

In Virtual or shared web hosting is one in which a single web server shares its resources with multiple users. In simple terms under shared hosting multiple web sites share the resources of one server. Such type of hosting is useful when one is not having his/her own server rather opts to use a virtual server to host his/her web site.

Dedicated web hosting

This type of hosting is considered as a most expensive type as in type of hosting, the web hosting company provides with an entire hosting setup including one’s own server hardware that only he/she can use. It means a much faster loading time for one’s site because the entire computer is "dedicated" to running the server software. This account is quite different from other hosting accounts, as unlike other hosting accounts where one’s web site shares space on a server with many other web sites, called a virtual server, here one’s site owns entire server solely. A dedicated server is considered best for web sites requiring higher availability and higher data transfer rates.

Collocation hosting.

This type of hosting provides the same benefits as dedicated hosting; the difference lies only in the server. This type of hosting is only recommended if one wants to have physical access to the server, or he/she have special server requirements. If one is located in New York and the server is in Seattle, it would be difficult, and expensive, for his/her to replace a hard drive. So one can have the hosting provider repair problems, but at a premium cost.

Points to clear before selecting a web-hosting provider

The following are the questions or points to ask a hosting company before starting-

1.Since how long have he/she been in business? Is he/she incorporated? Is he/she possessing own Merchant Account?

The above questions are meant to check stability and long-term continuation of web hosting service. These questions are quite important in the sense that they prevent signing up for a host who suddenly disappear one day.

2. How many customers do he/she is serving per server?

Depending on the Web hosting plan or the Web hosting company the server can be already over crowded on which one’s site is hosted. If a Web hosting company is a responsible one, then it will not overstuff the servers they own or collocate. However generally, sharing a server with several different companies is not a bad thing though. But one needs to ask his/her Web hosting company about the number of clients they are having. If one is looking around for Web hosting, he/she must ask each company about the client per server ratio. Thus after proper research one must check the company having least amount of clients per server and which is exactly as per requirement.

3. Is he/she allowing SMTP POP3 email to be sent and received from mydomain.com?
The answer most preferred one should be yes.

There are several hosting companies that forces one to send SMTP POP3 email from isp.yourdomain.com rather than yourdomain.com. For doing this they are having their own explanations, which are as under-

a) They claim it keeps the servers fast. However this claim is wrong, as a dedicated SMTP POP3 server won't have any problems

b) It minimizes Spam; again it’s untrue as spammers can still use technical tools for spamming from their account

Above all the biggest problem faced by a user us that there are some Internet Service Providers won't allow the use of isp.yourdomain.com.It means just in order to send one email via domain one needs to change ISPs.

4. If one is opting for a monthly-allotted bandwidth, what are the charges for each gig?
Here the answer has to be $0 to $2 a gig
One must make sure in advance for this as there is several hosts that charges extra for bandwidth afterwards like $100 per gig for additional bandwidth.

5. Do he/she having any upgrades for each account, and if so, what are the costs?
There are several web hosts that publish this information along with each hosting plan. Still it’s considered good to ask if one can't find this information.

Other issues

1. There are several other issues also like some web host companies usually lack professional "look and feel" in their emails, some are there whose support is just worst as either they take too long to respond or they never respond. So it’s better to check in advance.

2.In case of established web host companies, they generally respond to one’s email within 12 hours, if not then they send a courtesy email to inform one that they are reviewing one’s questions.

3. One, must keep in mind that there's much more to hosting than gigabytes and HTML, as without the professional support which one requires, his/her business will get lost as a consequence of that.

4.One must also check for an established Privacy Statement and Terms of Service. A web host lacking a Privacy Statement or Terms of Service is usually suspicious as it is a must for all web sites to establish this information to their visitors. So one must read the statement clearly in order to avoid any surprises afterwards.

5 One must also check for the references and then must with them regarding their experience.