Before you panic and purchase too much—or worse, too little—of each, though, let us guide you through the questioning process. We know a bit about server load, and considering we’ve put them together below, you might as well use our server statistics tips to guide you through the shopping blues.

What Does Your Five Year Look Like?

Right off the bat, it’s worth considering what you actually want to do with your website. Are you using your chunk of the Web to hock product, or are you posting daily content to a news bog about kittens? Will you be hosting information about your multimillion dollar corporation, or are you just creating a personal portfolio for your design gig?

Consider the Scalability

Once you’ve got the exact five year plan of your project in mind, consider how hard it would be to compensate for unexpected growth within your target market. In other words, the question is not so much how much RAM, bandwidth, and disk space you need, but how hard it will be to get more later. If your business takes off in a massive way, will you be able to upgrade quickly to match pace? If not, starting out large may be a better course of action. If your personal blog is not likely to garner much attention, and smaller specifications will match your initial need, it’s a safe bet that going budget will be an ideal solution.

Remember too that it’s easier to scale up when using shared hosting than it is with dedicated hosting. You can always bump your plan up a tier at HostGator, but adding more disk space to your dedicated server may be much more costly. Always keep the budget in mind, but don’t short change yourself in the future by staying cheap.

Related posts:

• January 4, 2010 – Top Reasons to Use Clustered Hosting Services
• November 2, 2009 – Do You Need Cloud Hosting?
• December 22, 2008 – Shared Hosting: The Ideal Small Business Solution
• January 13, 2011 – Web Hosting Guide
• March 2, 2010 – Virtual Web Hosting – What is it and Who Needs it?
• March 1, 2010 – Web Hosting Plans: Disk Space and Bandwidth – Are They Really Unlimited ?
• June 9, 2009 – Finding the Perfect Balance of Disk Space and Bandwidth
• May 20, 2009 – Factors to Consider for E-commerce Hosting
• March 31, 2009 – Do You Need Free or Paid Web Hosting?
• February 10, 2009 – Managed vs Shared Hosting – Which Type to Consider

Why web hosting service?

Web hosting service is the service which will launch your website on the World Wide Web and make you available to the online users as well. There are two kinds of web hosting services, the ones which can be availed free of cost, and the ones which are paid web hosting services. A free web hosting service, as the name suggests, is the web hosting service which will launch your company website without paying any fees to the service provider but the website of the company will be, in that case, bound to present the advertisement and banners of the web hosting company. A free web hosting service is greatly liked by customers but it has limitations which make it less preferable. These limitations are basically the limited disk space and limited data transfer.

A paid web hosting service is then a better option. However, if you are a small business organization and do not want spend much funds on website hosting free web hosting will be a better option.

For organizations which have enough resources to concentrate on extended website design, they must opt for paid web hosting service as it will allow their website more space, as it will be given more advanced services by the web hosting service provider. However, if you wish to spend a handsome amount of money on web hosting, make sure you get the top web hosting service for your organization. A good website will be an impressive introduction to the company and so, make sure your company website not only looks perfect but it is also well managed. A web hosting service should not only launch you in the global Internet world but it should also manage it well after it is launched. Web site management is one of the functions which require great efficiency and skill.

Find the best web host for yourself!

Get hold of a company which gives you best services at modest prices. Find the best web hosting service for your company website and this is possible if you properly analyze web hosting reviews of various web hosting companies. You must make a sound decision on the basis of reviews if you wish to get the top web hosting service.

There are various kinds of web hosting services like shared web hosting service, reseller web hosting, server space and bandwidth service. A good server space is required for loading sufficient information to the website by adding a sufficient number of webpages to the website, whereas shared web hosting service is required to maintain links and hyper links on the webpages of the website. So take sufficient time to decide the best web hosting service for your organization’s website.

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• October 2, 2011 – How Much RAM / Bandwidth / Disk Space Do I Really Need?
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• August 16, 2010 – Shared Hosting – How Much Can You Afford to Share?
• April 29, 2010 – What is 95th Percentile Monitoring?
• March 2, 2010 – Virtual Web Hosting – What is it and Who Needs it?
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• November 2, 2009 – Do You Need Cloud Hosting?

Trying to identify a web host can be a very daunting task especially when there are so many available nowadays and all of them promise one thing or another. Hence, it is crucial that before you jump in, you do your own homework or research for selecting the most appropriate web hosting company for your website.

With the changing trend of technology, web hosts are also changing. Most of them provide various services in addition to their basic ones. Say if you are running an e-commerce website, then of course you need high end security and a medium through which you can manage your web content efficiently. There are many tools that facilitate this, however if your web hosting service is not reliable then you can miss out on serious revenues and prospective clients.

Once you have determined and identified what web hosting services you require for your online business, it is then time to enlist certain web hosting features and options you must consider. You can find below some of the most important aspects of web hosting:

Disk space and bandwidth

You should know how much space your website would need and approximate data it will generate. When we talk about disk space, well, it’s actually the amount of storage assigned to you by the web hosting provider. The bandwidth is the amount of traffic that is allowed to access and leave your website. In case your website has a lot of graphics then you would require higher storage area and greater bandwidth.

Programming tools and the OS

You need to be sure that your website is uploaded through secure servers using the latest Operating System. Most web hosts run on a UNIX based operating system, usually Linux or BSD. For the running of various web applications you would require ASP, .NET, MS SQL, SBS and for these you need a Window based host.

Pricing Aspect

You need to compare pricing before you finalize a web hosting service. Some may provide you better services but at low pricing. It’s not always true that the best hosting services are always the most expensive. Do your research and then finalize.

Support, Security, Guaranteed uptime and Backups

Security and backups are two very important aspects that you need to consider. You should always choose a web hosting service with reliable telephone support. Some also offer 24/7 support through local or toll-free numbers. In case you are running an ecommerce website then security is one aspect that you just cannot discard. Your web hosting service provider should be such that they can monitor things round the clock and ensure no unwanted intruder can hack your site. After all it’s your website and it is really worth looking into this aspect of web hosting.

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• October 2, 2011 – How Much RAM / Bandwidth / Disk Space Do I Really Need?
• January 16, 2011 – Technique of Web Hosting
• March 2, 2010 – Virtual Web Hosting – What is it and Who Needs it?
• March 1, 2010 – Web Hosting Plans: Disk Space and Bandwidth – Are They Really Unlimited ?
• February 3, 2010 – Assessing Storage Needs for Your E-commerce Domain
• January 4, 2010 – Top Reasons to Use Clustered Hosting Services
• November 2, 2009 – Do You Need Cloud Hosting?
• June 9, 2009 – Finding the Perfect Balance of Disk Space and Bandwidth
• May 20, 2009 – Factors to Consider for E-commerce Hosting

What is a Virtual Private Server?

A virtual private server is the next best thing to a private server, and it does not require nearly as much capital as a private server. By using a virtual private server you don’t have to worry about any limits being imposed on your hosting account as far as your website resources are concerned. This means your needs will be definitively met with regards to bandwidth and disk space. In addition your site will be able to operate at peak performance virtually without limitation. Therefore you won’t have to concern yourself with constant upgrades or multiple hosting accounts unnecessarily.

Who Needs It?

If you’re a personal website owner with a blog or a personal site that does not contain many files, then you probably would not benefit much from a virtual private server. However, if you are a business owner that is looking to expand in the near future, then you may want to expand your horizons by considering a virtual web hosting service. Virtual Private Servers are especially beneficial to business owners because they provide comprehensive administrative rights to the user which gives them complete control over their business website.

A virtual web hosting plan is also more reliable than your standard shared web hosting plan as the customer support is more personalized and the web server is not being used by other websites. With shared hosting, the web server is being shared by other websites, and if these websites conduct illegal or questionable activities, it is not uncommon for the entire block of IP addresses to be brought down. This could result in down time and even the loss of many potential customers.

Choosing a Virtual Web Hosting Plan

Choosing a web hosting plan of any kind requires a thorough process of elimination. Through deductive reasoning and a bit of research you can find the information need to make an informed decision in a timely manner without hesitation. Perhaps the most important factor in any web hosting plan is the companies reliability and the support they provide their customers. Try giving each prospective company a call several times and see which one answers your queries as quickly and as friendly as possible. Since this will be your first private hosting experience you’ll need to be sure you have access to all of the information you need this first time around.

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• September 20, 2011 – Cheap VPS hosting – Considering the Top 5 Options
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• January 31, 2011 – Is VPS Hosting Actually Cheaper Than Shared Hosting?
• January 13, 2011 – Web Hosting Guide
• December 23, 2010 – Shared Hosting vs. VPS
• November 10, 2010 – VPS Hosting for Multiple Domain Hosting
• October 28, 2010 – The Diversity and Flexibility of Virtual Hosting
• September 30, 2010 – An Overview VPS Hosting Restrictions

The problem with most web hosting plans is that they claim to offer unlimited bandwidth and disk space, however they simply cannot truly offer this as they are not equipped to do so. Even Internet Service Providers don’t make such claims, as they know it is not possible to give this type of service to every customer. So then why do so many web hosting companies promise unlimited features that they cannot accommodate for?

All You Can Eat?

Think of it this way – when you go to a buffet, you are promised all you can eat. This means you are entitled to an unlimited amount of food, as long as you can swallow it. However, this does not mean that you are going to eat all of the food! In fact, most of the people at the buffet are not going to eat more than two plates! The buffet advertises unlimited food, even though both the restaurant manager and the diners know that this is not truly possible. How does this relate to web hosting? Because it is the same concept- web hosts offer unlimited bandwidth and disk space to attract customers. At the same time, they know these customers cannot possibly use all of their bandwidth.

Competition and Marketing

Due to the competitive nature of the web hosting industry, web hosting companies will do whatever they can to outbid the competition for your business. Web hosts know that most users are not going to uses even half of their allocated bandwidth, so they can offer unlimited bandwidth plans since there are so many server resources left over all the time. The sad part is, if the customer does happen to go over this hidden bandwidth limit, the hosting company may shut down their website without warning. While this kind of unlimited plan may be suitable for some webmasters, a rapidly expanding business should know their bandwidth limits to prevent from receiving warning letters and abrupt termination of service  from their web hosting service.

Conclusion

The saying “nothing is free” may be just as relevant as “nothing is unlimited.” When a web hosting company says they offer unlimited features, it may be best to speak with these web hosting company’s support staff to assure yourself that the features are actually unlimited.

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• February 3, 2010 – Assessing Storage Needs for Your E-commerce Domain
• January 4, 2010 – Top Reasons to Use Clustered Hosting Services
• December 28, 2009 – Factors to Consider When Choosing a Web Host
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• June 9, 2009 – Finding the Perfect Balance of Disk Space and Bandwidth
• May 20, 2009 – Factors to Consider for E-commerce Hosting

What is Cluster Hosting?

Clustered hosting, sometimes called cloud hosting is a web hosting service that uses virtualization technology to further enhance security and system resources spread across several servers. In essence , clustered hosting gives you and your website the benefits and added resources of using several servers at once.  With a normal web hosting service, you are usually limited by how much bandwidth, disk space, processing speed, RAM, and other resources that have been allocated to your hosting account.    With clustered hosting, you are not bound by these restrictions, because your hosting account has access to hardware that is practically infinite. This clustered server infrastructure allows you to upgrade with ease, and places no limits on your productivity.

Why Would You Need Clustered Hosting?

Many people find themselves in a situation where upgrading is absolutely necessary, and sometimes the limits they have placed on their won website is what ultimately results in downtime and lost business.   Even if the site does not go down for a long period of time, it may become sluggish, causing visitors to abandon your web site.  However, with clustered hosting you have access to a cluster of web servers,  giving your website all of the resources it would ever need to succeed. The best part about clustered hosting is that you don’t need to plan ahead to upgrade. As soon as your website is in need of some extra power, it will be drawn from the cluster of available services, ensuring you always have the resources needed.

Additional Benefits to Clustered Hosting

The advantages of clustered web hosting are obvious, in that it presents unlimited efficiency and scalability. Your website literally has unlimited potential with clustered hosting, as it is not restricted by  the confines of one server. Sudden traffic surges will no longer cause your website to run slowly, and your visitors will continue to return because of this. You may be wondering how you have access to these features without having to upgrade. The answer is simple, and it is one of the biggest benefits involved with clustered hosting. Clustered hosting services are paid ion a similar manner to a pay-as-you-go service, meaning you are billed at the end of each service period depending on how much resources are used during the billing period.

For these reasons, you’ll never have to worry about predicting how busy your website is going to be, and you will be sure that it can handle even the most incredible traffic surges.  Clustered hosting is perfect for a confident entrepreneur that believes their new website may be capable of out performing the limits of a shared hosting plan.

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• March 2, 2010 – Virtual Web Hosting – What is it and Who Needs it?
• March 1, 2010 – Web Hosting Plans: Disk Space and Bandwidth – Are They Really Unlimited ?
• June 9, 2009 – Finding the Perfect Balance of Disk Space and Bandwidth
• May 20, 2009 – Factors to Consider for E-commerce Hosting
• March 31, 2009 – Do You Need Free or Paid Web Hosting?
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What is Cloud Hosting?

Also known as clustered hosting, cloud hosting is a solution that often uses virtualization technology to facilitate load balancing, security and system resources over multiple servers.  This basically means that instead of relying a single piece of hardware, your website and applications can benefit from the resources of multiple servers.   In the typical shared hosting environment, a website is limited to the bandwidth, disk space, RAM, processing power and others resources allocated to the physical machine.  Cloud hosting is a concept that frees you of these limitations, providing you with on-demand access to an infrastructure that is virtually inexhaustible.  The mere structure of the cloud makes it easy to scale up or down based on your individual requirements.

Who Needs Cloud Hosting?

Throughout the years, a countless number of websites have been the victims of their own success.  This is the website then ends up suffering because of its sudden boost in popularity and traffic.  The environment in which this situation occurs the most is shared web hosting.  Once your website exceeds the limitations of a single physical server, it is susceptible to choking.   Cloud hosting is the perfect alternative as it gives you access to a cluster of servers, allowing your website to benefit from additional bandwidth, RAM, processing power and other resources it might require.  The major selling point to this solution as that you can obtain this extra boost in computing power when you need it.  If the popularity of your website subsides a bit, you can easily place the resources back into the cloud and make them available to other users.

Are There Other Benefits?

Cloud hosting services offer benefits from numerous angles.  The most obvious advantages are its scalability and cost efficiency.  Being that cloud computing is a highly scalable technology, websites and applications can be expanded greatly thanks to the additional resources.  Dealing with slow responses and frequent crashes just because your site experienced a sudden surge in traffic is a common thing in the shared hosting environment.  The cloud’s scalability allows you to avoid this problem with ease.  Another major benefit of cloud hosting is the flexible pay-per-usage model.  When signing up with a provider, you are only charged for the amount of computing power you use, similar to how you pay for your gas and electrical bill.   No longer do you have to lease and maintain a costly and complex dedicated server just to improve performance.   These are a few of many benefits that have made the cloud the talk of the IT world.

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• May 19, 2009 – Avoiding the Pitfalls of Unlimited Domains

In order to estimate how much disk space and bandwidth you need, you should first determine what type of website you will have.  In general, small business sites fall into one of the following classifications.

Mini-sites - Also referred to as one-product sites, min-sites are small and usually consist of two to three pages.  The main focus of such a site is to sale a single product or collect contact information from visitors and try to market products to them at a later time.  This is the type of site you often find with a lengthy sales letter along with an order form and contact page.

Brochure Site – A brochure site typically has about 10 web pages that describe what the business does.  It goes over their products and services, location and targeted market among other details.  The site might also contain a contact page, an about page and other pages where items can be purchased.  These sites get their name because they essentially act as the company’s online brochure.

Theme-based Site - This type of website revolves around a specific niche market or topic.  It could be a site dedicated to freelance writers, web hosting or work-at-home moms.  These sites usually receive frequent updates and contain articles, tutorials and other resources.  A theme-based site can either sell its own products, items from affiliates or simply exist to provide a lot information.

Each website classification has different disk space and bandwidth requirements.

A mini-site usually does not require an enormous amount of disk space. On the other hand, if it starts to gain popularity through effective search engine optimization, affiliate promoting or word of mouth, it will likely generate more traffic.  In this instance, the amount of bandwidth becomes crucial.

A brochure site does not require a lot of disk space or bandwidth.  This is the average small business site, one that can get by with the basic offerings of a good web hosting provider.

A theme-based site usually does not require that much disk space or bandwidth.  In the beginning that is.  If this is a website that truly requires frequent updates, the requirements for disk space can increase quite fast.  Moreover, once you add more content and generate more traffic, your needs for data transfer will also increase.

Regardless of what type of site you have in mind for your small business, it is a good rule of thumb to expect the unexpected and take the future into account from day one.  The best thing you can do in any event is to make sure your host doesn’t charge ungodly amounts for overages and provides an easy path to service upgrades.

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• April 29, 2010 – What is 95th Percentile Monitoring?
• March 2, 2010 – Virtual Web Hosting – What is it and Who Needs it?
• March 1, 2010 – Web Hosting Plans: Disk Space and Bandwidth – Are They Really Unlimited ?
• January 4, 2010 – Top Reasons to Use Clustered Hosting Services
• November 2, 2009 – Do You Need Cloud Hosting?
• May 20, 2009 – Factors to Consider for E-commerce Hosting

Disk Space and Transfer

Whether it is a blog, community or e-commerce site, disk space and bandwidth are the core elements of any hosting solution.  It is these two resources that will ultimately determine what size package you need.  Though making this determination can be difficult, it should help to know that most e-commerce sites require a little more than others.  This is because you have to factor in product images, shopping cart applications and hopefully, frequent customers.  Regardless of how much disk space and bandwidth you start out with, make sure you choose a service that has the future in mind with a path to easy upgrades.

Payment Options

The multitude of payment options is enough to keep you up for nights but this is a bridge that must be crossed.  Fortunately, the preferred method of payment online is by credit card and there are several ways to meet this need.  Services such as PayPal make a nice option for small start up stores that don’t have a need to sell a large number of products.  The service is free, very secure and virtually anyone can get an account.  The downside is the hefty transaction fees attached to every sale you make.  At the end of the month, you might notice that these fees are taking a sizable chunk out of your bottom line.  An alternative would be a merchant account as it shows more credibility and has considerably lower transaction fees.  The problem here is a strenuous review process in which only a select few qualify.  It would be wise to compare a few carts so you can make an informed decision on which method works best.

Shopping Carts

After getting your payment options together, you must then figure out how those transactions will be facilitated.  The answer here is an aptly named piece of software known as a shopping cart.  These days, hosting providers offer a wide variety of shopping carts to choose from, many of which come free in e-commerce hosting packages.  While the software is a matter of preference, it is best to choose one that has your customers’ best interests in mind.  The shopping cart should be simple for you to set up and easy for your customers to use. You can learn more about what’s available by reading shopping cart reviews as they generally give you a good idea of what to expect.

Conclusion

There is so much that goes into e-commerce hosting and most of it has to do with your personal requirements.  Aside from the factors mentioned here, you will need a special set of management tools, security features and an overall reliable service.  These are easily obtainable when purchasing service from a reputable provider.

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• November 21, 2011 – The WePay Surge: Why They May Dethrone PayPal
• October 2, 2011 – How Much RAM / Bandwidth / Disk Space Do I Really Need?
• September 1, 2011 – Budget Web Hosting: Is It Worth the Buck?
• June 24, 2011 – Preventing e-Commerce Shopping Cart Abandonment
• January 13, 2011 – Web Hosting Guide
• September 28, 2010 – Ecommerce Site Building Checklist

What is the Intent of Your Site?

When it comes to choosing a service, the first step that needs to made is determining the purpose of your site.  Some people use a website as a convenient means of sharing photos and information with family and friends while others are looking to start a business online.  Although every website is based on the same general concepts, there are extremes that greatly differentiate business sites from their personal counterparts.  Knowing the purpose of your site will make it much easier to decide between free and paid hosting.

What will it Include?

After determining the needs of your website, you should then have a better idea of the content it will include.  Some websites consist of a single homepage and others contain multiple pages with dynamic features.  If you only need to upload small text documents and photos, you will not require tons of disk space and bandwidth in a web hosting solution.  The same holds true if you only anticipate a minimal amount of traffic.

If the above sounds like your plans, you can probably get by with free web hosting.  Free services are typically easy to use and cater to individuals with no experience at creating web pages.  With the right platform, you can learn more about HTML programming and put those skills to use for a professional site in the future.  Many have used these services to build their presence online before moving on to a paid solution.

Can You Afford to be Limited?

Although a free hosting service can help you get a website, there are several drawbacks you should take into consideration.  First and foremost, you have very little control over your hosting environment.  Because of this, you may be forced to allow the hosting provider to place third-party advertisements on your web pages.  Secondly, features are quite limited in comparison to a premium hosting solution.  You only have a small amount of disk space and bandwidth to work with and technical support is almost non-existent.  Such disadvantages are the very reason free hosting services are best suited for personal websites.

Paid hosting gives you more flexibility and control with a variety of packages to choose from.

You will have access to more disk space and bandwidth along with a number of highly sought after features.  This ranges from powerful databases and dynamic programming languages to multiple email accounts and free domain names.  These are features you just won’t find in a shared hosting plan.

Conclusion

As you can see, free hosting has its purposes, howevef, the usefulness is primarily limited to personal sites.  Anyone who plans to make a serious impact on the web is better served with a premium hosting solution.  In this case, it pays to have a service that provides the features and reliability you need to achieve your goals online.

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• March 2, 2010 – Virtual Web Hosting – What is it and Who Needs it?
• March 1, 2010 – Web Hosting Plans: Disk Space and Bandwidth – Are They Really Unlimited ?
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