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Cheap Web Hosting Package

There are many affordable web hosting packages available today. How do you decide which one is right for you? Even when the price is important, you should never buy your package based on this factor alone. Remember the old adage “You get what you pay for”.

If you know what to look for when shopping for a cheap web hosting package, getting the right one for your needs is easy. Just make sure to check out the following:

1. Disk space and bandwidth limits

Some packages offer very limited amount of disk space and low traffic volume. The hosting company will charge you extra for additional disk space and bandwidth. Even if your website is small at the moment, you will need some extra space to allow for its future growth.

2. Included domain name

Unless you already have one, you will need a domain name for your website. The domain name can cost you between $6 and $30 a year depending on the registrar. If you decide to use private registration to hide your personal data in the domain names registry you will have to pay around $20 a year on top of the regular registration fee.

3. Included email accounts and mailbox size

Most web hosting companies offer email as a part of their packages. If you need to have email in yours, decide how many addresses you will need. Make sure that the package you are getting provides enough email addresses and adequate mailbox capacity.

4. FTP access

You will need to upload different files to your website. Check whether you will have an FTP access to your server - some companies will only provide a web browser-based file upload tool. It’s always better to have more than one way of transferring files to your server.

5. Dynamic scripts support

If you will have anything other than simple HTML pages on your website, you will need you web server to support dynamic scripts such as PHP, CGI or Perl.

6. Technical support

You need to have access to tech support whenever you require it. A good hosting company will provide you with 24/7 phone and email support even for the smallest packages.

7. How to close your account

If you are not satisfied with your package, you should be able to close your account within reasonable period of time - at least 30 days - and get full refund. Make sure your web host provides this option.

Now you know how to select the hosting package that won’t disappoint you.

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Choosing a good web host is not difficult. However, there are several important considerations that you must take into account in order to find the right web host.

1.) Disk Space

Disk Space is measured in bytes. 1 megabyte (MB) is roughly 1,000,000 bytes. 1 gigabyte (GB) is about 1000 MB.

It’s not difficult to calculate disk size needed for your web site. First, you must add all your files to find out how much space your site needs now. Then, you must consider future additions and updates to your web site.

Disk Space = Current Files + Future Additions

2.) Data Transfer, Bandwidth

Data Transfer measures how much data was transmitted from your site to the visitor and back.

If the web site consists of several pages for a total of 3MB, and there are 3,000 visitors a month who visit every page, then amount of data transferred is 3,000 * 3 = 9,000 MB. Since probably not every visitor will visit every page of your site, the best formula to calculate monthly data transfer is the following:

Data Transfer = # Of Visitors * Page Size * # Of Pages Viewed Of course, number of visitors and page viewes will differ from month to month, and so is amount of data transferred. Flash, video and music files usually account for most data tranmitted to and from your site.

3.) Operating System

Many web hosting services use Linux or Windows operating systems. Your choice of operating system should be based on what programs you plan to use.

Both Windows & Linux are fine for HTML files. However, Windows is best for ASP while Linux is fine with Perl/CGI. Take a look at what software and databases your prospective host is supporting.

Usually Windows hosting is more expensive. Some people wrongly believe that you must use the host that has the same operating system as your computer. Actually you can use Windows on your computer and have Linux host, and vice versa.

4.) Up Time

Up Time is a percentage of time your site is available online.

Sometimes even the very best web hosts shut down due to numerous reasons (outage, maintenance, human error…). However, your uptime must be at least 99% to 99.5%, and top web host provide it.

5.) Customer Support

It is very important to have professional help if something is wrong with your site. A good web host should offer at least a day time customer support and online support options.

6.) Price

Naturally you want to pay the lowest price possible for web hosting. However, sometimes cheap or free isn’t necessarily good.

You want to make sure that your host offers enough web space, data transfer and good customer support even if it means paying a little more. This is especially true for E-Commerce web sites. If your site is too slow to load or is down for some time, you lose customers and money.

I don’t recommend free hosts because they often place banners and other ads on your web pages. Many of them go out of business on a short notice or no notice at all. Also some free hosts won’t let you use your domain name and you will have to use their domain that can make your address too long and hard to remember.

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