Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Affordable Web Hosting

Web hosting is an essential component of any web site, without the right web hosting service to back up your website you could end up loosing valuable time and money. Today there are so many web hosting companies online that it has become increasingly difficult to keep up with the latest developments and also figure out how to choose the right web hosting company for your web site. In fact with server storage costs plummeting, the cost of web hosting has come down considerably, and sites like http://www.5shadeshosting.com are actually offering quality web hosting for as little as $6 a month!




When it comes to web hosting, there are few things that you as a webmaster have to keep in mind before you actually choose a web hosting company. The first thing to do is to determine your requirements, how much space do you need? For how long do you need the web hosting? Do you want to enter into a long term agreement or one that is for a limited duration of time? How many email ids do you need? Once you have the answers to all these questions you should then start looking for website hosting services.



The first factor that should influence your decision in choosing a web hosting company is flexibility, most web hosting companies usually have 3 or 5 different plans designed for various users, some offer unlimited space, while others offer limited transfer of data. If you have a regular website that does not have any databases or other similar e-commerce functions then 5GB of web space should be sufficient. Make sure you shop around and find a web hosting company that is offering web space that is close to your requirements.



Another fact to keep in mind is that there are limitations on the amount of data you can upload and download, the minimum amount is close to around 250GB, if you are thinking of frequently making changes to your site, and are not sure how much data you will need, then choose a web hosting plan that offers large amounts of data transfer without charging the earth.



The final fact that will definitely influence your decision in choosing a web hosting server is the kind of operating system you require, sometimes e-commerce sites require dedicated operating systems, for example if your site is using .NET then you will need a windows based server, as Linux does not support .NET hosting. It is therefore essential for you as the webmaster to understand your site’s requirements clearly and then choose a web server that meets all your requirements.



There are other important features that usually influence the decision of choosing a web hosting service, but the essential factors by and large are space, operating system and data transfer, if you have these three factors catered for then the chances are that you have picked the right web hosting company to host your site. Also make sure you shop around before you make your decision, the more you shop around the better the chances of you finding the ideal web hosting company for your needs.



Choosing a Flexible web hosting company



There is no telling what your requirements will be in a month’s time or a year’s time, you might want to switch to another plan, or make changes to your existing plan. Usually most web hosting companies allow flexible web storage, and usually have add-on services like emails, SSL certificates etc. If you are not sure about the way things will go for your site, and might need to make changes rapidly, then using companies that have limited tie in periods allowing web hosting services for shorter durations of time like 2 months or 3 months is a good idea. Not only can you reassess the situation in time but you can also make sure you have the best deal when the time comes to upgrade or downgrade your web hosting plan.

Technique of Web Hosting

The technique that allows computers or servers to host web sites is known as web hosting. The facility of web hosting is provided by various service providers. Web hosting is important as it enables a user to access any site in the world. Also, it allows one to store textual and visual information, apart from other Internet matter on the website mediums.




There are various kinds of web hosting services from which you can choose from. Some companies provide you web hosting services for free, while some charge the user. There are certain drawbacks of using free web hosts. This is because there are certain limitations regarding the services they provide. Moreover, a user is not provided with customer service, and is not provided uptime guarantee. The limitations on bandwidth, advertising and edit sites may hamper the growth plans of a company.



Thus, it is advisable that you pay for the web hosting service. However, a user should take into consideration his needs before selecting a web hosting service provider. Depending on a users data transfer, disk space and other necessities, the service can cost him anything between $10 to $5000 per month according to his usage is extensive. Also, the payment can be done on monthly, annually or semi-annually basis.



In addition to your needs, web hosting reviews must also be taken into account before selecting a web hosting service provider. The reviews or ratings of the service providers are available on the Internet. Various service providers can be compared on the basis of price, traffic and space. One should also take into account the bonus or additional features provided by the web hosting providers. It is advisable that one should read the blogs regarding the web hosting service providers. They help you get a realistic feedback and thereby help you in selecting the best web hosting service provider.



Some of the other points that must be considered while choosing a top web hosting service are,

1. Bandwidth

2. Server Space

3. Control Panel

4. Support

5. Script access



The bandwidth capacity should be more than of 500 MB. However, it does not make sense to pay for capacity which you will not use. For people who run small businesses, bandwidth of one gigabyte is enough. The same holds true for server space. For personal use, 50 megabyte capacity is sufficient. Select the web hosting service provider that offers a user 24/7 customer service. This is because, in case of a problem, the customer centers will solve your problem. One can also visit their site and read the FAQ’s, since they add to the knowledge of a person.



The control panel provided by the service providers should be a simple version as will be easy to use. Make sure that the web hosting service providers facilitate you with script access. It may not be required at that moment but, may be useful for future purposes.



Since the best web hosting service adds efficiency and success to the business, due consideration must be given in selecting a service provider.

Starting a Web Hosting Company

It seems many people today want to start a web hosting company. Just by typing in “web hosting” into a search engine such as Google, one can see that there are many people trying to break into this market. The concept of starting a web hosting company seems very simple – start with a generic template, get a reseller account, configure some things, and start making money. But things can become much more complicated than that very quickly. There are definitely some things to keep in mind before starting a new web hosting company.




The first thing that needs to be done is to get the website going. This includes getting a template, creating pages that describe the company, its plans, and its services. When that is done, a program such as WHM Autopilot needs to be configured. This is so that when someone orders the web hosting, the order will automatically be received. Not only do these things need to be done but they need to be aesthetically pleasing as well.



Then comes the more difficult part of starting a web hosting company – the selling. As mentioned earlier, this is a very competitive market. The company needs to find people who need the service and will check out the website. On top of that, they need to find the price reasonable. A marketing plan must be developed before taking this step as there are usually cheaper, more reputable companies trying to get those same customers.



Once the company has their website and has customers, customer support becomes a big issue. The first thing to keep in mind is that customers are going to want technical support available twenty-four hours a day. If the company can’t provide this, they’re more likely to look somewhere else. Also customers will usually be paying around ten dollars a month for the hosting service. This is not very much. Because of this, when customers need to be consulted or they have a problem that needs fixing, the rate of pay for the company can drop very quickly. Larger hosts usually hire technicians to deal with these sorts of issues but that may not be a possibility until the hosting company becomes a little more established.



When running larger websites, the hosting company will usually need to offer dedicated hosting services. This is due to the fact that shared hosting only provides for a certain amount of storage space and bandwidth and this is not often enough for the larger sites. The speeds are also much faster with dedicated services than they are with shared. However, there are challenges that come with dedicated servers. They require time, maintenance, and the cost is much more than that of a shared server. The lowest a dedicated server will cost is usually around one hundred dollars but quality servers will usually cost hundreds of dollars each month to own.



For companies that aren’t going to offer plans that have major requirements, a shared server will do just fine. If a company does want to offer those plans, the advantages and disadvantages of owning a dedicated server must be looked at in great detail to know if it is the right decision.



Starting a web hosting company is definitely possible. However before one takes the plunge, it’s important to look at all aspects of it. It’s also important to make sure that there is plenty of time available to run the business and to deal with customers

Web Hosting and E-Commerce

There are a host of opportunities available to anyone interested in having an online business and the first thing they should do is to consider web hosting and e-commerce for their websites. If you are not sure what e-commerce really means, well it is nothing but the act of making sales as well as purchases of goods through the medium of the internet. Thus, if this is what you need to do then you need to check out e-commerce web hosting which will be sure to throw up many different plans that will provide you with good support as far as your online business needs are concerned.




After you have built up your website you will need to make it run so that it brings in increased profits for you and the basic thing you will need is to organize yourself for e-commerce web hosting. This is especially important because the world of the Internet is increasingly becoming faster paced and there are all types of companies engaged in selling and buying online including small as well as large companies. Also, these companies need a lot of flexibility in their operations, and need to be secure and also appreciate great performance as well as reliability from their website and this is a very good reason why the need for e-commerce web hosting has greatly increased in recent times.



Using ecommerce web hosting, you can get the very latest in technology and make it suit the style of your company and it is also helpful in providing solutions for the website as far as its functioning and scale are concerned. The benefits to using ecommerce web hosting are felt by both the buyer and also the seller when they conduct business online and you can find many suitable e-commerce web hosting services. In fact, such services are of great interest to a wide range of people including web developers and most certainly to those who are engaged in business and who need to hone in the latest in commerce that is conducted electronically and this is most noticeable in the fields of finance and also retail selling.



What’s more, most of the websites hosting packages that are available today are pretty affordable and they also come with their fair share of web tools that help considerably in getting the most out of your website. And, with E-Commerce web hosting the online business will certainly flourish much more and you can use it for having wide-ranging catalogues that are stored online and which include all the goods and products that you are interested in selling and which can be searched or are just used for processing credit card sales and purchases that occur in real-time. That is where ecommerce web hosting will prove its worth to online business community. Ecommerce web hosting is thus considered as one of the top web hosting methods and with this new method of web hosting you can grow your online business and prosper and achieve all that you want to as far as online business transactions are concerned.

Technique of Web Hosting

The technique that allows computers or servers to host web sites is known as web hosting. The facility of web hosting is provided by various service providers. Web hosting is important as it enables a user to access any site in the world. Also, it allows one to store textual and visual information, apart from other Internet matter on the website mediums.




There are various kinds of web hosting services from which you can choose from. Some companies provide you web hosting services for free, while some charge the user. There are certain drawbacks of using free web hosts. This is because there are certain limitations regarding the services they provide. Moreover, a user is not provided with customer service, and is not provided uptime guarantee. The limitations on bandwidth, advertising and edit sites may hamper the growth plans of a company.



Thus, it is advisable that you pay for the web hosting service. However, a user should take into consideration his needs before selecting a web hosting service provider. Depending on a users data transfer, disk space and other necessities, the service can cost him anything between $10 to $5000 per month according to his usage is extensive. Also, the payment can be done on monthly, annually or semi-annually basis.



In addition to your needs, web hosting reviews must also be taken into account before selecting a web hosting service provider. The reviews or ratings of the service providers are available on the Internet. Various service providers can be compared on the basis of price, traffic and space. One should also take into account the bonus or additional features provided by the web hosting providers. It is advisable that one should read the blogs regarding the web hosting service providers. They help you get a realistic feedback and thereby help you in selecting the best web hosting service provider.



Some of the other points that must be considered while choosing a top web hosting service are,

1. Bandwidth

2. Server Space

3. Control Panel

4. Support

5. Script access



The bandwidth capacity should be more than of 500 MB. However, it does not make sense to pay for capacity which you will not use. For people who run small businesses, bandwidth of one gigabyte is enough. The same holds true for server space. For personal use, 50 megabyte capacity is sufficient. Select the web hosting service provider that offers a user 24/7 customer service. This is because, in case of a problem, the customer centers will solve your problem. One can also visit their site and read the FAQ’s, since they add to the knowledge of a person.



The control panel provided by the service providers should be a simple version as will be easy to use. Make sure that the web hosting service providers facilitate you with script access. It may not be required at that moment but, may be useful for future purposes.



Since the best web hosting service adds efficiency and success to the business, due consideration must be given in selecting a service provider.



Article Source: http://onlinearticles4you.com

All About Professional Business Web Site Hosting

Latest in the information and communications technology is professional web site hosting. It is stirring big waves in this dot.com age because aside from the good turn-out of investments, internet has become now a necessity among people. Thus, web site hosting is not only an income generating business, it is also a sort of rendering service to what is being needed now by many.




The same with other businesses, professional business web site hosting also entails struggles in maintaining it and selling it to the target market. It is not just mere web hosting, it is totally professionalizing it to meet the demands of the high-end market. And to appear and market the dependability of the hosting company is not as easy as it looks.



Here are some tips that should be considered before jumping into the business of web site hosting (and to look it more professional and credible):



- Decide on the type of web hosting service you will sell to the market.



a. Shared hosting



In shared hosting, many customers (or web site owners) are sharing the space of one particular server. A physical web server can accommodate many different web sites at one time, depending on the capacity of the web site provider. This kind of hosting is not that applicable among those business type web sites which require a high-speed server response. And since many web sites are sharing one the same web server, it is most likely that shared hosting plans are cheaper than those plans that go for web server exclusivity.



b. Dedicated hosting



With dedicated hosting a specific web server caters to only one user. The server is solely owned by the user. Out of other types of hosting solutions, the dedicated server hosting commands a higher payment. It might be the most expensive, however, it is the most stable hosting service because only a single customer is under a web server - no one is sharing underneath.



c. Virtual private server hosting



This kind of web hosting is somewhat like a prelude of dedicated hosting. The user has still the most control in the web server even though there are a few others who are sharing with the server. The user still has the full control, such as installing anything in the site or uploading any video or audio files. Virtual private server is an ideal start for those who have just begun in professional business web site hosting.



d. Co-location hosting



Co-location is about the client buying only the space within the web hosting provider's secure data center. The client will be the one to own the web server hardware. In this set-up, the customer has the full control on the web server at the same time enjoying the 24-hour support system provided by the secure data center.



e. Reseller hosting



Reseller hosting is ideal for business to business. In here, the web host offers web server space to another individual or user at a lower price. This third party, on the other hand, resells the web server storage to their customers.



- Know your target market. Identify their needs and expectations of their web host provider. In doing so, it will not be that difficult to conceptualize marketing strategies as well as features that can further entice the customers.



- Always stand on what were promised. Never lie to your clients about the kind of services your web hosting company is capable of giving. Do not give false claims. This will not just make the web host look unprofessional, it also give a bad impression about the company which can linger in the long run.

Creating a Web Hosting Business Plan

Creating a Web Hosting Business Plan

Like any other business, a web hosting business also requires careful planning and design as guide for the entire operation. A good web hosting business plan contains these essential elements: the objectives of the web host, its target market, the methodology of how the web hosting business will operate, and the company's profile and financial scheme.




The Objectives



Objectives are very important in directing the activities of the business towards a common goal. Laying down the objectives will guide the web host in the conceptualization of marketing strategies in order for it to sell its services to the market. Also, determining the web host's objectives or purpose enables the web host to delimit its company from exploring tactics that are unnecessary and off-tangent from the kind of services it promotes.



A good objective is also one way of advertising your company to clients. It gives the clients the complacency that the web host, indeed, knows how to go about its web hosting business (with relativity to its objectives).



Web Host Target Market



It is important that the target market of the web host should be made known and should be included in its web hosting business plan. Most companies invested efforts, money and time just to conduct surveys on the latest demands of its target market. This is called the consumer analysis. The results of these surveys will serve as the basis for the planning of the entire concept of the web hosting business. Also, knowing the profile of the target market will make the conceptualization of marketing strategies easier.



Methodology



Most of the planning takes place here. What can be found mostly in methodology are the tactical and strategic plans to promote the products and services being sold by the web host. It should also be taken into consideration that web hosting business plan varies, depending on the type of website that the client wants to project.



It is also in methodology where clients will know how the web host would execute the important factors needed in rendering its web hosting services. These factors include the capacity of disk storage, data transfer speed, domains, database functionality, FTP accounts, and security and reliability features. Advertising and promotion also fall under methodology. Most of the time, web host companies give free services to its clients for a few days trial. This is one strategy in attracting more clients.



Company Profile and Financial Scheme



Web host's company profile is also one important basis for choosing for a client. It is best to include the web host company profile (not failing to mention the office location) and the people (with their respective relevant experiences) who are manning it in the business plan.



In making a web hosting business plan, it is also necessary to point out how the flow of finances will go about. Professional financial projections are important items that require a lot of planning to avoid short-backs of finances and logistics in the long run.