Frequently Asked Questions About Hosting - Free Hosting Vs Paid Hosting

What is a server or hosting company?

Every web address must reside on a server (host computer) to be accessible on the Internet. A server is a computer that is connected to the Internet and uses specialized software to make web pages available on the Internet at fast speed. Because obtaining and maintaining your own server is expensive and requires specialized skill, small businesses usually rent space on a hosting company's server to store their web pages. When Internet users enter your web address into their browser, the host directs them to your web site.

Can I use my own computer as a server?

Yes, you can, but it's not practical. When you turn off your computer, nobody can access your web pages. Hosting companies use much higher speed internet connections, allowing your web pages to be viewed at a much faster speed than your telephone line.

Can I get free hosting?

Free hosting has many limitations and often provides only limited space for personal use. A major disadvantage of free hosting is that you will have a long address which starts with the provider's name such as http://www.yourprovider.com/yourname/yourfilename.htm. In addition, most free hosting companies place advertising on your web pages that detracts from your message and slows down your pages.

Hosting fees range from $4-$100/month and up, depending on the space and features you need. The average fee for hosting for a basic small business web site is $7-$25/month. You may have to pay extra for a shopping cart, sequential autoresponders and other features.

The following sites provide a list of free hosting options: www.webtimetools.com/free1.shtml and www.freewebspace.net.

To convey a professional image, you must pay for hosting and get your own domain name.

Hosting for a basic business web site shouldn't cost more than $20 per month. You could pay higher fees if you need more features but don't pay for features you don't need.

How do you select a hosting company?

Select a hosting company based on their service and support, the reliability of the company, the speed and quality of their servers, cost, the web space and bandwidth they provide, and the availability of features such as pop email accounts, statistics, and autoreponders.

The easiest way to select a hosting company is by referral. Your web designer can recommend a hosting company and upload your web pages to the server. If you design your own web pages, you will need an FTP program such as WS_FTP to upload your pages.

Leva Duell, Five Star Web Design and Marketing, provides web design built on proven marketing strategies. Visit http://www.fivestarwebdesign.com/ebook.html and get a FREE ebook, Inside Secrets to Developing a Profitable Web Site, providing powerful, non-techie web design and marketing strategies to increase your online profits.

Article Source: EzineArticles

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Basics of Hosting Services For Business Or Personal Websites

Considering the amount of time and effort that goes into a website and its importance to you or perhaps even your business, you will want to find a hosting service that has an excellent reputation and offers little down-time. Today, even highly reputable hosts will have "budget offerings" that can provide stable hosting at reasonable rates. Though many people make the decision based solely on price, the best deal isn't always the cheapest.

We all know you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but when it comes to choosing a service company, online or off, presentation says a lot. A web hosting provider with a poorly written website or an unattractive presentation doesn't give much of a sense of reliability or professionalism. Support and overall services will potentially be less than desirable. In this scenario, it doesn't matter how cheap the hosting plan is.

There are many things to consider when choosing a hosting service for your website. Determining your specific needs based on the type of website you are planning is the first and most important step. If you haven't actually created your website pages, consider making a site map or an outline of what you propose to get a clearer picture on the number of pages and bandwidth you may need.

* Space: The amount of space your website will require is often related to the type of site. A personal website will need a smaller amount of space, perhaps as little as 20 megs of space, than a merchant or store-front site with a lot of media or download files that require a great deal of space.

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Basics of Hosting Services For Business Or Personal Websites

Considering the amount of time and effort that goes into a website and its importance to you or perhaps even your business, you will want to find a hosting service that has an excellent reputation and offers little down-time. Today, even highly reputable hosts will have "budget offerings" that can provide stable hosting at reasonable rates. Though many people make the decision based solely on price, the best deal isn't always the cheapest.

We all know you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but when it comes to choosing a service company, online or off, presentation says a lot. A web hosting provider with a poorly written website or an unattractive presentation doesn't give much of a sense of reliability or professionalism. Support and overall services will potentially be less than desirable. In this scenario, it doesn't matter how cheap the hosting plan is.

There are many things to consider when choosing a hosting service for your website. Determining your specific needs based on the type of website you are planning is the first and most important step. If you haven't actually created your website pages, consider making a site map or an outline of what you propose to get a clearer picture on the number of pages and bandwidth you may need.

* Space: The amount of space your website will require is often related to the type of site. A personal website will need a smaller amount of space, perhaps as little as 20 megs of space, than a merchant or store-front site with a lot of media or download files that require a great deal of space.

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10 Criteria For Selecting a Hosting Company

What should you look for when selecting a hosting company?

You want to select a hosting company based on their service and support, the reliability of the company, the speed and quality of their servers, cost, the web space and bandwidth they provide, and the availability of features such as pop email accounts, statistics, and autoreponders.

1. Service/Support

It's vital that you can reach your host 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If your web site is down for several hours, it might cost you hundreds or thousands of dollars in sales. Customer service is the most important consideration in choosing a web host.

2. Reliability of the Hosting Company

Make sure the hosting company is reliable, has been in business at least two years, and has good ratings with the Better Business Bureau and Dun & Bradstreet.

A server should be up at least 99 percent of the time. Ask if the host has back-up servers available they can use when the server is down. Request testimonials and a list of satisfied customers.

3. Fast and Reliable Servers

Choose a hosting company that uses fast and reliable servers.

4. Cost

Hosting for a basic business web site shouldn't cost more than $25 per month. You could pay higher fees if you need more features but don't pay for features you don't need.

5. Web Space

Most web hosts offer more storage space than you'll ever need. You may need additional space if you are offering a lot of free downloads like software demos, videos, images, free ebooks, and similar items.

6. Bandwidth

Bandwidth is how much data can be transferred at a time or the speed of the server. Make sure you won't have to pay additional fees when your transfer volume increases. 10 GB bandwidth will be enough for most sites. Images, audio and video files take up more space and bandwidth than text files. If you're offering a lot of downloads, you might need more.

7. POP-email Accounts

POP email accounts allow you to use email software to receive your incoming emails instead of having to log in to a web site to check your email. I believe that most hosting accounts provide this feature today.

8. Support for ecommerce

Many hosting companies provide ecommerce tools such as a shopping cart system. Even if your host provides a shopping cart, you may need a more sophisticated system from a specialized company.

9. Statistics

You need to know the number of visitors you receive daily, weekly, and monthly, which sites they came from, and which pages have been accessed.

10. Autoresponders

Most hosting companies provide autoresponders but most are not sequential autoresponders and they are not working with web forms. You may need a more sophisticated autoresponder from a third-party company.

The most important part of hosting is reliability. In addition to the features you need, it's important for your web designer that a hosting company provides a user-friendly control panel. Your professional web designer can help you choose a hosting company.

Leva Duell, Five Star Web Design and Marketing, provides web design built on proven marketing strategies. Visit http://www.fivestarwebdesign.com/ebook.html and get a FREE ebook, Inside Secrets to Developing a Profitable Web Site, providing powerful, non-techie web design and marketing strategies to increase your online profits.

Article Source: EzineArticel

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When to Upgrade to a Dedicated Server From Cheap Web Hosting

While the thought of always paying as little as two figures per month for hosting is definitely appealing, you should expect to outgrow a certain hosting plan at one point or another. Every webmaster out there wants more traffic and the more traffic you receive, the more you'll have to pay for hosting.

But What If I Don't Upgrade?

There's only so much a cheap shared hosting plan can do for you and, once you start receiving a lot of traffic, you can count on at least one of these two things happening:

* your hosting provider will kick you out and, even if it may sound crazy, they're not doing absolutely anything illegal: read their Terms and Conditions carefully and you'll find out yourself that there are certain clauses which basically allow them to show you the door whenever they feel like it
* your server will run incredibly slow or will crash extremely often

The two consequences are anything but a dream come true. If your hosting provider kicks you out because you don't want to upgrade, your website will basically stay offline until you find another host. On the other hand, if your server ends up being very slow and crashes a lot, you can count on your website being offline quite often and, even when it will be available, the experience of your visitors won't exactly be very pleasant.

Let Your Host Help

Once you notice that you've outgrown your current hosting package, contact your hosting company directly and ask them for an opinion. They do want you to continue taking advantage of their services, so it's in their best interest to help you find a good solution.

A responsible hosting company will basically suggest a couple of packages which would work well and let you make the final choice. If you were taking advantage of a shared hosting package and didn't see a dramatic increase in traffic, a Virtual Private Server will probably do. But if you've noticed some explosive growth and have every reason to believe that things are only going to get better, going dedicated would be the smart thing to do.

How to Negotiate?

If you've been a customer for a long time, that puts you in a position to negotiate some good deals. Once you contact them, most hosting providers will not automatically throw their best offer at you. You have to be smart about it and negotiate: let them know that you are looking into a lot of other options as well and tell them that you're interested in finding out what their best offer is before making your final choice.

While you shouldn't expect a spectacular discount, the offer you will receive will probably help you save quite a bit down the road. Assuming that a company you've worked great with in the past offers you a nice discount when upgrading, it should be obvious that sticking with the company in question is the best thing to do.

Read more articles about cheap web hosting and find an affordable dedicated server based on user feedback.

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Dedicated Or Shared Web Hosting - Which One is Better?

One of the biggest arguments in choosing the best web hosting service provider comes through when people sit and argue about which type of web hosting provider to be chosen. Now, the discussion is not on whether to choose free or paid ones. The basis of the argument is to choose between Dedicated and Shared Web Hosting services.

In most cases though, you would find that the Dedicated web hosting services are paid ones, but with that being said, it offers some advantages, which could beat shared web hosting services completely.

Let us first try and understand what these web hosting services mean. Dedicated web hosting means that your website would be provided with a certain amount of space, and that space or bandwidth as it is called, is all yours. No other website would have the option of being hosted in the space. This could mean you can play around with your website, of course, within the space allocated to you. Importantly, if there are any errors coming through, the technical troubleshooting team would be able to spot and fix it without a lot of delay.

Shared web hosting services is where a certain amount of space is shared in hosting some websites. How many websites are hosted through the shared web space depends entirely on how much space is available and how big are the websites. Often, you would find that most of the technical issues of people come through from shared web hosting providers. This is where technical support teams apparently face a lot of issues, as the space is all too cranked up.

Knowing how dedicated and shared web hosting services work, you would do well to choose one based on what your needs are. It may just be possible that you could end up choosing dedicated services instead of the shared ones, because they fit your needs.

You can get cheap and best web hosting deals at Hostgator. Get more information HERE



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