Sunday, February 1, 2009

Data Transfer

These days, in an all-out effort to get your business, web hosting companies offer a bewilder ing array of choices. The competition for your business is one of the factors that makes web hosting a great buy for prospective webmasters. Here are some things to consider when choosing a both web hosting company and your individual hosting plan.

Web site hosts offer an often bewildering array of features for a prospective customer to choose from. In an effort to compete with other web hosting companies, primarily the competition is in four areas:

1. Storage space
2. Data Transfer (bandwidth)
3. Extra features like scripts, extensions, statistics, etc.
4. Price for the above.

Consumers often base their web hosting purchase on just these four features. Their choice often boils down to who offers the most space, bandwidth, and features for the least amount of dollars. But well informed consumers should also consider these other factors before making any web hosting purchase.

1. Are you going to be hosting more than one domain? How many domain names are you eventually going to register? Does your plan allow for this?
2. How much space and transfer does your website really need? Most web hosts count on sites using a small portion of their plan's assets.
3. Do you really need add-ons like shopping carts, automated script installs, FrontPage extensions, and site builders?
4. Is your web host offering a Windows package when you really need Linux or vice versa?
5. Does your web host offer flexible payment plans and advertise them truthfully? Many of those "low monthly rates" apply to accounts paid ahead a year or two.
6. Is your primary purpose blogging or starting a forum? Make sure your host's PHP and MySQL are up to date and can handle the latest offerings.
7.Do you need to host large files such as audio and video without storage and bandwidth issues?
8.Do you need complete stats? Does your web hosting plan offer a stats package at no extra charge?
9. Is the control panel flexible and easy to use? CPanel and Plesk are two of the standards.
By keeping all these points in mind you, as a prospective web hosting customer, can choose a web hosting company that will meet your needs, as well as the individual web hosting plan that is most affordable for you and offers the features you really need. Educate yourself, and make the choice that makes the most sense now, as well as for any additional future hosting needs you'll require.

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