by mightyohm

Choosing a Web Host – Frequently Asked Questions

This article was provided useful information about choosing a web hosting provider. There are several things to look for when choosing a reliable and yet cheap web hosting. The following are provided to frequently asked questions and answers to frequently asked questions.

P. How reliable is the service a web hosting service?
Most surveys indicate that reliability is an e-businesses main concern. You should look at least 95 percent uptime guarantee to ensure that the service is really reliable.

P. What kind of results I can expect?
A great hosting company has one or more T3 lines that are always connected to the Internet, not going through another hub of the network. The servers must be fast, ideally Pentium Pro or Linux. You should also let your host know if you are using bandwidth murderers like streaming audio or video.

P. What is the phone support?
When it comes to phone support, you should seek assistance 24 / 7 telephone is always available with a live operator. Once you have discovered, you should always check it. Call or e-mail technical support line at 10 o’clock at night or on Sunday and expected to be answered.

P. How much will it cost?
The hosting service with an entry level single domain name, 20 to 30 MB (megabytes) of hard disk space, email services and up to 1 GB (Giga Bytes) of monthly bandwidth should not cost more than $ 50.

P. How do you handle security?
Most of the time in a process to get good and cheapest web hosting finally trapped in wrong hands. Such companies provide pathetic security mechanism that ultimately gives you nothing but suffering. The passwords to your website or domain should be required to control the host, and manage the website. Every file on your server must also be supported on a daily basis. You should always find a host that provides security for transactions as well.

P. How much bandwidth needed for data transfer?
Around the estimate, 2 GB bandwidth should be perfect for a very small personal site. If you are running a medium site with text and images but no large files, 5 GB would be ideal. Largest sites on the other hand, require 30 GB of bandwidth. Good hosting company will send you an email if you are about to run out of bandwidth, letting you know that your site can be turned off if you exceed the quota. In this way, you can upgrade your plan if you choose.

P. What about a control panel?
Almost all hosting packages have some kind of control panel, allowing you to configure hosting packages, as well as its settings without having to learn the entire operating system that powers the site. The control panels can be accessed through a secure web page, and then appear in your web browser. The most popular control panels are Helm, Cpanel, Hsphere, Plesk and Ensim. The most common is Cpanel, which only works on Linux. Most beginners and other users would be more suited to Cpanel, and running on the Linux platform cheaper.

P. What about a POP3 account?
When sending and receiving email, POP3 account are very important. These types of accounts you can assign to individual users their own email addresses. POP3 accounts you need enough for the amount of email addresses to be assigned to other people. Many times this number will be cited as unlimited, although there are only so many email addresses that you can actually create.

P. What about spam and viruses?
I have very bad experience with hosting provider when virsues actually destroy my whole site then  I decided to find another provider that not only  have control on spamming but on viruses as well. In this process I ended up on very famous  Canadian web hosting provider and from that day to now I never been faced this problem again.These features are classified in a separate category, and can include autoresponders, spam filters, even anti-virus protection. May be important to you, but in reality varies from one host to another. Basically, these are all things without which the host will give you when you register for an account. If you’re plan does not offer quite what you want, your host may be flexible in setting up your account.

P. What about running my own online store?
If you are planning on running your own online store, there will be some factors that will participate in that decision. First, you need an SSL certificate for your website, so you can process credit card transactions. Basically, these are three parties that will take care of each and every transaction, a small price percent, eliminating the need for greater security on your server. You also need to ensure that the server and the software is able to run the script you have for your shopping cart.

P. Do I need help making the final decision.
If you plan on having a website that is entrusted to the income or storing important data, you must make sure that you go with a host that will offer a high level of customer support. A lot of hosting companies offer forums as well as their contact numbers, however the forums can be excellent when it comes to very little problems.

In Conclusion

By taking your time and check to see what each host has to offer, you can find the service that best suits your needs. There are many machines and many different packages out there to choose from, which means you should not go with the one you see first. Take time to compare plans, costs and customer service and you should have no problem choosing a web hosting service.