Before we talk about what it takes to be a cheap and good quality web host, let’s get to the fundamental first.
What is a Web Host?
A web host is a service provider that places your web site on a computer which is connected to the internet. The term for this ‘computer’ is called a server.
A web hosting provider will typically have a fast connection to the Internet and they may host thousands of web sites on many servers. The web host essentially rents out space to you so that you can get your website up on the world wide web.
With a well-managed web host, you can free yourself from worrying the up-keep of complicated server technology and proper technical maintenance. That’s the whole purpose of the web hosting companies. You should leave the technical work to web hosting professional while you focus on your own internet business.
Let’s begin…
Feature Offered
The features that web hosting companies are offering are getting quite standard nowadays.
The followings are some of the common features you’ll see in most web hosting plans:
* Control Panel
Control Panel is an interface where you can access your site on the web server, allowing you to set-up and subsequently update and customize your web site. Though cPanel is by far the most popular control panel, some hosting providers customize their own so that they can up-grade and expand it at will.
* Diskspace
A vast majority of sites that don’t have tons of graphics, sound and video clips or downloadable files easily fit in 50 MB of disk space. You should always leave yourself some room for growth or check if the host has a bigger plan in case you need to upgrade.
* Bandwidth
Bandwidth is the amount of data transmitted or received through a unit of time. In web hosting, bandwidth is consumed when visitors make requests for files on your web site and download them to their personal computers.
* Email Account
With POP3 email accounts you can check email from Outlook, Netscape Mail, Eudora or any other Email software.
* Scripting language
As all our top 10 listings are using Unix and Linux platform, php, perl and CGI are the languages we are talking about here. It is best to choose a host that supports the latest version to maximize the latest web technologies for the fee that you pay.
* Database
If your web site is going to store a lot of data that should be dynamically accessible (like user accounts, stock prices, maps, Interactive news, message boards and forum etc.), you’ll need to look for an account that offers a database. MySQL is a powerful and most popular database program that runs on the Linux operation system. It is able to handle million of entries all at once. Its flexibility and speed allow you to also store logs and pictures. MySQL is designed to scale well under heavy traffic conditions and is ideal for database-intensive or e-commerce-enabled Web sites.
Customer Service/Support
No matter if you are an expert or a novice in web hosting, you need a web host with good customer support system. What is the criteria of an excellent customer support? Let us explain.
* How big is the knowledge base?
This is particularly important for those who want to search for quick answer without seeking direct assistance from customer support staff. Due to the huge database, normally it’s searchable. Some web hosting providers will even make your life easier by making a video tutorial guiding you step by step in setting up your new account. Very useful for beginner.
* Responsive customer service staff.
If you are too lazy to find the answer out of a big pool of database, get the direct answer from someone who knows it. Direct customer support comes in a few forms.
a. Email support
b. Phone support: Normally, sales and technical support uses separate phone line. A good phone support staff knows what your problem is and answers with relevance.
c.Web Host like Lunarpages and Globat even have live chat support. However, it’s not how many support channels that are available but how responsive it is of the staff. You can find out the hosting reviews and ratings of each of our Top 10 Cheap Web Host.
Price to Disk Space / Price to Bandwidth Ratio
Are you paying too much for your Web Hosting Plan?
Having done the research on hundreds of web hosting companies, in general, we’ve come to this conclusion: the more disk space and bandwidth you are getting, the more expensive is the monthly price.
To help you understand which price is competitive enough for you to take up the offer, we have categorized 5 different price range. For each price range, a score of maximum of 10 is assigned. To understand the concept behind this, please refer to the details here.
Popularity
A web host might have the best feature offered, unbeatable customer support and reliability in place but without an effective marketing plan, it will go bust too. Let’s face it. If a web hosting provider does not have sufficient members and steady growth of new members, it’s very difficult to survive in this highly competitive industry.
We judge the popularity of a particular web hosting provider by looking at the number of awards won, the reviews of other websites and the Alexa traffic ranking.
All the hosting providers listed on our Top 10 Cheap Web Hosting Directory are among the top 40,000 most visited websites in the world.
Reliability, Speed and Uptime Guarantee
Nothing can hurt you more than this: your visitors come to your web site only to find that it’s not accessible. You lose credibility and possibly even a sale. If your web host does not guarantee at least a 99% uptime, leave the web host now!
To ensure maximum uptime, installation of redundant back-up systems is essential. Each web host has their own management systems to minimize downtime. “Redundant” means that if any of the Internet connections get interrupted, the alternate Internet connection will take over.
We use Alertra software to monitor the uptime of each of our top 10 web hosts.
As for speed, even though routing, web server set up and local area networks play a part in determining the speed of a site, the main concern of how fast your site is depends very much on the types of network connections.
Many hosting providers still connect to the Internet through T1, or T3 connections. This is not the case for our top 10 hosts- they are using OC (Optical Carrier) lines.
A T1 line will offer data transfer rate of 1.5 Mbps (megabits per second), while a T3 line can supply data transfer rates of 43Mbps. OC-1 refers to a circuit that transmits 51.85Mbps. Higher levels are multiples of that speed. Ultra-High Speed OC3 and OC12 lines offers 155Mbps and 622Mbps respectively. Some hosting providers have connections to major internet backbones at the speed of OC48 (2488Mbps) and OC96 (4976Mbps).
I don’t know about you but I have been in this situation more than once. You sit by your desk and get an idea of a website that you would like to build. Maybe it’s just a personal or family website or maybe it is a business website. It doesn’t really matter as both are sites that you would like to have online fast and be able to access where ever when ever.
So after building your content (or some of it) and deciding on what domain you think would fit your website then you come to on of the tasks that I have personally had a lot of difficulties in dealing with. That is the choice of the company to host your new website.
If you are completely new to this then I suggest that you go visit Google and try searching for “web hosting”. At the time of this article there are 214 million pages competing for the term. So how are you supposed to pick the right one? Well at first I didn’t have a clue my self.
One option would be to go through the first ten or twenty web hosts and pick the one that you feel has the solution you are looking for. But what if two or more of them offer the same solution? Do you go for the lowest price, the best service or is it something else that will trigger the decision?
Luckily there is some clever people that has already found out that this is more than the average person can cope with and they have therefore create the site called FindMyHosting.com. When I first started building websites I didn’t know of this site but boy it would have save me a lot of time looking for the right host.
At first the site might look a bit confusing because of all the information gathered in one place. However if you focus on the middle section of the site you will quickly find that they have a searc option where you can choose between Country, Monthly Price, Hosting Platform, Disk Space, Data Transfer Limits and Number of E-mail accounts.
This is basic stuff for the experienced website builder, but if you are one of those I’m sure you already have a favorite web host and then you don’t need to go look for a new one. But as a newbie the basic stuff is mostly more that enough to make a fair choice of a new web hosting solution.
If you are on a low budget you can find hosting solutions down to $1.50 a month. Companies like InMotion Hosting and 3Essentials offer hosting solutions for $1.50 a month with about 1GB of storage space, 10GB of traffic, 15 e-mail accounts etc. Now this seems like great solutions for a new person launching a website.
BUT… before you make the final choice of web hosting company you must take some time to search the internet for information about this company and their solutions. Use Google to find out what other people think of their solutions, their support and their general business ethics.
Personally I would never choose a host based solely on price. Make sure you go with a web host that other people have had good experiences dealing with. If you can find any positive comments or even any comments I suggest that you move on to the next one. It might be a new company and who knows whether they will be here in one or two years?
Web hosting providers offer a vital service to those who wish to open their own website. This service allows information from individuals and businesses to be accessed by Internet users.
Web hosts enable anyone with a computer to create a website and make their information available to those interested. The hosts do not author the website but project it onto the Web for you. They are a big help to people with a limited budget or technology who want their own website.
Compare Web Hosting Providers
When you are ready to choose a web hosting provider, it is good to compare services and features to find the best one for your site. There are many aspects to consider in choosing the one that will best serve you. Services are offered to the consumer in multiple formats according to the user’s needs.
Free Web Hosting
If you are a hobbyist, or someone interested in posting personal information, you probably don’t need a lot of web space or extra features. There are free hosting services provided for the smaller sites. This gives individuals the opportunity to use hosting services without an expensive financial commitment. Some services offer 20 to 40 megabytes of storage space. These are only meant for personal use.
With a free web hosting provider, your site will be listed with others in a web community or large server. It is usually filed by sub-category with pop-up or banner advertisements along with other sponsors included by the host. Usually, web design options are limited with free services. Because they do not charge, technical support is not assured and personalized domain names are not offered. There are some higher quality web hosting providers that will offer better packages.
Budget Hosting
For the more complex sites and ecommerce hosting, there are web hosting providers to offer all manner of services. There are budget hosts that provide more affordable hosting but also with a possibility of slower and less efficient service. Because of the high volume of customers on the server access is determined by a first-come, first-serve basis. This can result in competition causing delays because of the high server load.
Prices range widely for web hosting providers, along with the services they offer. If you want cheap hosting then expect to find lower quality service. There will be fewer options to choose from. This may be acceptable for a person with a non-mission or personal site. A better plan should be considered for business and ecommerce, where service is vital.
Better Services
If you are expecting high traffic on your site, look to the web hosting providers that will give you all the features you need. For an online store, you will need quality features listing your products in a catalog, offering a shopping cart and credit card services. For other businesses, you will need a domain name and links to make your site available to consumers.
Many of the web hosting providers will offer plans using PHP and supporting MySQL, which enable dynamic functions. Some of the smaller plans start with one gigabyte of space for photos and personal entries. A larger package might be five gigabytes to add blogs and other features to add depth to your site.
Choose Carefully
When looking for a web hosting provider, it really does pay to shop around. Decide beforehand what you want in your site. Then find the host that has all the features you want. There are many resources to help you locate the one that is right for you.