Archive for April, 2008

The Right Web Hosting Package For Your Business Website

April 30, 2008

If you plan to have a business website to offer goods and services online, you will need a good web hosting provider for the same to work. Nowadays, there are countless options available in the market. While searching for website hosting services, you will come across three options:

1) Dedicated server
2) shared web hosting
3) co-location

Once you start looking for business website hosting, you will see a number of ads and links that claim to be the best. These may vary from free web hosting and cheap web hosting to expensive packages. It’s best to focus on what you really need for your business requirements and ignore the hype.

Dedicated server hosting is that which allows you to rent the entire web server for hosting your website. This is a good solution for webmasters who lack the startup capital to buy their own server. You get control over the disk space and file transfer capacity available for your website. Dedicated servers also provide faster internet connections. The disadvantages to using this top quality web hosting service is the high cost involved and lesser control available as compared to co-location web hosting.

Shared web hosting is a type of hosting where you rent disk space on a large server along with many other sites. It is the most affordable form of web hosting and has many features and options for all kinds of business websites. However, it lacks the quality found in dedicated or co-location web hosting. You may lose sales when the server goes down and your site may not be very secure.

Co-location web hosting is that wherein your server equipment is located in a secure state of the art facility in the web host’s location. A big advantage of this type of web hosting is that it provides you with total control over the reliability and data transfer speed of your web site. It can be tough to beat the quality of service available in co-location web hosting but it can prove to be very expensive for start-up ventures.

Preparing For Budget Web Hosting Plans

April 17, 2008

A lot of people would opt for a budget web hosting plan when they start their online business. Still, one must be prepared to handle its own consequences. There is a small risk attached to budget web hosting which every customer should be aware of. Many budget web hosting companies have secret ways of doing business. It is very essential for a customer to find out the different types of facilities and benefits involved with the web hosting package which he intends to buy.

Before signing up with any web hosting provider, you must know what your web host is about and how it operates. Given below are a few of such pointers:

1. Focus on the experience of the budget web hosting company. Many of them may not have been in the market for too long. Such companies may have little or no experience at all. You don’t want to end up purchasing a web hosting service that is brand new and inexperienced. In fact, the best option will be to go for a web host with many years of experience and satisfied customers.

2. Look for a budget web hosting package that is affordable and at the same time provides all the benefits that an expensive web host would provide. One such advantage will be 24/7 support system. Also, there are some budget web hosting providers who don’t offer any information about the level of support they offer. Hence, you must check and test the support system yourself before signing any service agreements. On the basis of your experience and their skills, you must take a decision of whether you should sign up with the web hosting provider or keep searching for a better one.

3. Talking about the service agreement, you must go through the service level agreement provided by the budget web hosting provider. If they do not support a SLA then you must not go for their services. The agreement should be strong and contain all terms about what will happen and the type of service you will receive. Make sure that you sign up with a budget web hosting firm that has a clear SLA to help you tackle issues that may arise after you have purchased the web hosting plan. You will also know exactly how to move on while running your website.

4. The majority of web hosting companies claim to be web hosting companies but in reality they offer a variety of other business where web hosting is one of the products that they are dealing with. Preferably, you should opt for a company that focuses on web hosting alone. Don’t hesitate to ask about this and confirm it before you sign any agreements with them.