Whenever
planning to launch a website, blog or forum the first thing to consider is the
web hosting service that is most suitable to fulfill all your needs and
requirements. It is quite difficult to look through thousands of service
providers in order to find the one most suitable for you while also trying to
ensure that affordable web hosting service will be provided to you along with
good quality.
First
and foremost you need to assess what you expect with your website? What files
will be uploaded on to it? Will it contain graphics, videos and audio etc? How
many pages will it contain? What kind of traffic will it see in the coming
year? What kind of technical and customer support you want, whether by phone or
email? And most importantly how much you can afford?
Once
you have the answer to these questions you will know the specific service that
you need to look for. The best web hosting service will provide the best
quality at a low and affordable price. Still there are others that will
compromise quality when providing affordable web hosting. There are certain
things that a person needs to look out for depending on your website’s
requirements. These things include advertising, amount of web space, FTP
access, uptime, traffic or bandwidth, file types and size limitations,
PHP/MySQL support and technical support provided.
If
trying free web hosting then some hosts impose advertisements on your site
which are in the form of pop-ups, banners or an advertising frame. You need to
go with the advertising plan that you will feel comfortable showcasing on your
website. The web space you use depends on graphics, images, video and audio
files that you incorporate in your website but not on the number of pages that
make up your website. Some sites can contain up to a 100 page without taking up
more than 5MB space. While looking for appropriate web space for your website a
margin for expanding your website must be kept in mind.
FTP
is the most commonly used method to upload web pages and files on to the host
server. Therefore FTP access is mandatory otherwise you might be left with an
online site builder which does not provide many options. A web host guarantees
reliability based on the amount of time it will be functional called the
uptime. All sites go down for some time but an uptime of greater than 99.5%
must be guaranteed. Even if websites claim to provide unlimited bandwidth they
will still start charging you once they’re so called “unlimited bandwidth” is
exceeded; the term unlimited bandwidth is just used to attract customers and
usually does not exist. Moreover you also need to see the resource limit and
per GB charge once you exceed your package’s specified bandwidth.
There are numerous
affordable web hosting services that might compromise on these vital aspects of
good quality host service. Therefore careful research must be conducted and
customer reviews should be taken into account before the right affordable web
hosting service is chosen.
