Selecting a hosting plan is a critical step when you want to start up a website.  Prior posts from me were about domain name choice and website creation.  Now let’s talk a little about hosting:  Choosing a hosting plan is a primary step in launching your fledgling web presence.

The next step after creating your website is to make it live on the internet, or publish it.  To have your website seen on the internet you will need to choose a hosting plan.  A hosting plan is different from a domain name.  You own your domain name but you rent a hosting plan.  With a hosting plan you will be paying a service provider to publish your website on the internet for all to see.  The key considerations for choosing a good hosting plan will be discussed here.

SERVICE  The most important consideration is the level of service provided.  Bells and whistles and fancy features will do you no good if you can’t get customer service in a timely fashion.  Once your website is live on the internet you will want it to be up all the time.  Strategically the best thing you can do for your website upfront is to choose a hosting company that is reliable in terms of customer service as well as “uptime”.

UPTIME  When shopping for a hosting company, find out if they have an uptime guarantee. The better hosting providers will offer up to 99% uptime.  Even at 99% average uptime it can mean that your website will be off the internet for over 7 hours per month. If at all possible, choose a host guaranteeing up to 99.9% uptime.

SIZE  What size, or how many pages will the website have?  One of the determining factors for the price of most hosting plans is the amount of space required to store the website on their server’s hard drive.  If your website will be media rich with videos or music or photo files, or a large e-commerce site with a lot of catalogue pages, you will have to take space into consideration as a criteria for choosing the right hosting plan.

LINUX OR WINDOWS  Which operating system should your hosting plan use?  This question has no relevance to the brand of operating system you are using on your computer.  What programming language was used in the Web site design?  For example, if you designed a website using ASP or ASP.NET, you’ll need to find a Windows hosting plan. If you have a Web site that uses CGI or PHP, you’ll need to get a Linux hosting plan.  For the novice user who is building a simple html website the above may not be a consideration at first, but may become important later on as you become more experienced and add more features to your website.

TRAFFIC  How much traffic or how many visitors do you expect monthly?  Hosting plans are usually sold at different level plans according to the bandwith that will be required.  Bandwidth = Traffic.  Obviously more bandwidth is better because it allows more visitors to visit your site, but at the beginning this will be hard for you to gauge.  Usually the best way to proceed here is to start with a basic low bandwidth plan, and upgrade later as the traffic begins to flow to the website.

SHARED OR DEDICATED HOSTING  Whether or not to choose shared hosting over dedicated hosting comes down to the following:  First a brief description of shared hosting, which is sharing space on a server with dozens or perhaps hundreds of other websites.  The main factor here is that you will have no control over the operating system, database structure, etc., and will have to work within the structure setup by the hosting provider.  Dedicated or virtual dedicated hosting is different in the sense that you will have full control over the environment that your website resides in, and you will have the only access to that space.  Dedicated server hosting gives you full control over setup of the operating system and auxilliary programs such as database management or shopping cart or database management software.  Generally customer support will be low to non-existent, since this type of hosting is geared to the advanced user who will be using his own custom setup.  The best advice I can give to the newbie is to use shared hosting at first, until you gain more experience and abilities and are ready to take the plunge into something as advanced as dedicated hosting.

At StartMyWebsiteToday.com I offer 99.9% guaranteed uptime and offer customer service 24/7.  The hosting plans that are offered include a variety: shared hosting, virtual dedicated hosting, and dedicated hosting plans with either Linux or Windows operating systems for every need and budget ranging from the small personal website to large online multimedia sites to those interested in ecommerce website building. To review the options we offer, click HERE: Hosting plans.

It’s been stated there are currently more than 50 thousand website hosting suppliers all saying for the opportunity to host your website. Each day, a few fresh online hosting ventures are set up and are steadily fighting to win a right to provide for your hosting desires.

Even though the online hosting business is rather new, it is by far one of the most competitive and fierce online businesses present today. The development market is kind of assured and will show exponential expansion in the foreseeable future.

Every week it is conjectured that 50 thousand sites are set up and need some kind of hosting and a place to be stored on the Internet.  This number continues to rise with each passing week. The latest count of available web sites according to the leading search engine is over 2,000,000.  Recently, the popularity of blogs has tempted people to start up ten’s of thousands of new blogs every day. Although most of these blogs are hosted free, the better bloggers need an account with an authentice web hosting supplier. Naturally, all independent online hosting accounts routinely involve at least single URL enrollment.  Here are a few impressive URL figures for you:

The recorder holding the biggest figure of DNS’ is stated to be Wild West Domains.  They are perhaps known to you as Godaddy. They presently represent over five million DNS’ registrations. The recorder bearing the 2nd biggest figure of DNS’ is estimated to be Enom. The recorder bearing the 3rd biggest figure of DNS is estimated to be Network solutions.

the most common well known URL is the .Com. There are roughly 40 million listed Internet sites.  The .com top-ranking URL presently holds approximately seventy percent of the Domain name server market. The .net top-ranking URL currently bears roughly 10% of the DNS market.  

The best news for web hosting and DNS clients is that unbelievable business deals are accessible as rivalry grows among web hosting suppliers.   As an important point the price of website hosting has reduced to about 10 pounds a month for a good service.  Domain names that were priced at approximately thirty-five pounds just a few years ago can now be purchased for less than five pounds.

This represents a positive expansion for the sellers and a great change for customers.  The caliber of the service is also on the rise as the new hosting firms must impress their clients and contend with the old, established organizations. There has never been a more secure time to establish an online hosting supplier and build an online presence of one’s own.

Great Domain Names and Reseller Web Hosting