7 Questions to Choosing Your Hosting Plan
Addressing what you should ask before purchasing your hosting plan
1. How much space do I need?
This would all depend on the kind of website you have. For example, if you have a multimedia rich site (the kind that contains flash, audio downloads, etc), a much larger hosting plan, providing a bigger hosting space, would thus be needed. However, should your website only contain purely words and some pictures, a basic hosting plan would suffice.
Some guidelines:
Description | Minimum | Maximum |
Small, Personal Website | 10MB – 50MB | 100MB |
Small Business Website | 100MB | 1GB |
Average Business Website | 400MB | 1.6GB |
Large Corporate Website | A Dedicated Server | - |
2. How much bandwidth do I need?
For the uninformed, bandwidth is defined as the amount of data that can be sent from one computer to another through a particular connection in a certain amount of time. Hence to answer how much bandwidth do you need, this would be dependant on the number of traffic (visitors) you have targeted for your site.
more Visitors targeted = more Bandwidth required
3. What server should I host on?
This would depend on your preference and what language your site is being built with. Generally, a Windows hosting plan is preferred, as it is easy to develop and also provides free source codes. Unlike Linux and Unix hosting (which only supports CGI, PHP), a Windows hosting plan supports most of the languages used to develop a website. Thus you would not need to worry about switching hosting providers, should you decide to revamp your site in another development language.
4. Shared Hosting? Dedicated Server Hosting? Which one?
Dedicated hosting would be apt only if you are from a large corporate website, gaining many visitors a day, selling a huge range of products online, etc. However, if you are just a small or an average business, a Shared Hosting plan would more than suffice your needs. A Shared Hosting is when many individual websites are located on the same server. Most email/web hosting are Shared.
We believe that all sites have different requirements, ‘To Each it’s Own’. There is no ‘this is all you need’ package. It would be good to make a list of features that you require, ranging from important to not so important. This would be handy when choosing your provider.
Below are just some guidelines (to name a few):
- FrontPage support
- POP3 email
- Control Panel
- Web-based email
- Anti virus support
- Anti spam support
Hosting is provided by a large number of providers; namely local ISPs, Resellers and the most reliable of all, the Professional Hosting Companies.
We strongly recommend hosting your site with a Professional Hosting Company, as they are the specialist in this field and would be able to provide you with timely and the best support.
There are however many hosting companies. One must hence thoroughly check out a few, before settling on one. Be very cautious about a company offering, cheap web hosting, as it may just turn out to be the most expensive one, causing you to lose money over downtime, and giving you non-existent support.
The checklist
- Technical support/Customer Service
Call in and talk to them before purchasing. How efficient are they? How long do you have to wait until they attend to you? Does it meet your standards?
- Uptime
100% uptime claim, is usually a scam. This is because scheduled maintenance and upgrading, to keep their servers in good condition, would mean that there would be some downtime.
- Internet Connection
- Cost
Leave a Comment