If you have a website designed you have to place it on a server so it is available to your customers. If you type the words ‘web hosting’ into Google or any other search engine, the results will be overwhelming. In fact, today, when writing this article, I checked Google and there were 189,000,000 listings!!!

If you try for ‘cheap web hosting’ in Google, your results will be narrowed down to 17,200,000. Either way, millions of sites show up in the listings. So how do you know which one to choose?You could ask your friends, but if they don’t have an online business, they’re likely to tell you that you don’t need a site.

To help you unravel the puzzle of choosing a web hosting company to suit your needs, I’ve listed several of the main things you need to look for and why.

First, I’ll explain bandwidth which is vital to understand if you’re choosing a hosting company that has any level of bandwidth restrictions.

Bandwidth or Data Transfer Both of these terms can be loosely interchanged for the purpose of this article. Briefly, it means the amount of data your site is sending to a visitor and receiving from a visitor. Text only pages are relatively small files, therefore use only a small amount of bandwidth per visitor, but when you add graphics or sound to the page, the size of the page increases. Multiply the file size by the number of visitors to estimate bandwidth. If you start adding podcasts, embedded videos, flash and large images to your site, your bandwidth will increase dramatically. For example if you have a site with a 300 KB flash file, 2 x 250 KB images and 100 KB HTML file and that page is viewed 1000 times in a month, the bandwidth for that page alone is 900000 KB, 900 MB or 0.9 GB per month. If you have 10 pages of similar size, that’s 9 GB per month. Why is bandwidth limited with some hosting companies? In the early days, when the web first became popular, people surfed the ‘net with a 14.4 modem (very slow) and there was no flash, streaming audio, streaming video and loads of bandwidth gobbling monsters to contend with. Now in the current, fast world, huge bandwidth can be chewed up in milliseconds. Telecommunications companies charge hosting companies for bandwidth, so if the hosting company is to remain out of bankruptcy courts, they must pass the costs on to the consumer. A sensible consumer will understand this limitation and be grateful their hosting company spells out exactly what the charges will be.

Use the five points below as a checklist when you’re choosing a hosting company.

1. Storage space and data transfer

   A small information site, mini site or personal site will usually only require a few megabytes of disk space, however, data transfer depends on the size of the pages your are offering your visitors multiplied by the number of visitors. Therefore, a popular and graphics heavy website (such as online art gallery Click Art Gallery, or a page such as the Diamond Mega Sales Pack ) requires a greater monthly transfer than a mostly text site such Rebecca’s Resource Blog.

   

   You should look at a minimum of 2 GB (2000 MB) data transfer a month for an average site with average traffic. Check with the company that they can upgrade your account if your site increases it’s need for storage or monthly data transfer.

2. Added Features

   Make a list of the features you want before you start your shopping for a web host. Many features such as e-commerce shopping carts and real time credit card processing will cost you a lot of money.

   Pre-installed scripts such as email scripts should be included for free. It’s nice if you can get a range of free scripts and the ability to install your own. You should always get browser control panel and browser mail, this allows you extra flexibility with your site. Browser based email lets you access your mail from any Internet connected computer. Be sure you know what’s included in the cost of your hosting package. If in doubt, contact the company and ask.

3. Technical Support

   As most hosting companies offer inclusive technical support, you shouldn’t pay extra for this. If you’re not offered 24 hours/7 days you should look elsewhere. The test is to contact the company and ask questions. If they don’t reply within 48 hours, or don’t reply at all, consider another hosting company. If they don’t answer a potential customer, they’re not likely to bother when they have your money. A good company should reply within 24 hours at the most. If the hosting company has live support, that’s even better.

4. Reliability

   How reliable is a web hosting company? Most claim 99.9% uptime, but due to the nature of computers and communications equipment, outages will and do occur occasionally. You can contact a company and ask, but they will tell you they’re very reliable. Instead, ask for a
   couple of sites they currently host, that you can check out for yourself. Not only will you see that the site is available, it gives you the opportunity to see how well they perform during peak periods too. Most companies are quite reliable now, not like a decade ago when I first created websites.

5. Price and Guarantee

   If the previous four steps check out, then you need to consider price and this can vary widely.

   Consider setup fees, monthly fees, plan discounts and optional extras in your calculations. Some companies offer you ridiculously low or no monthly fees, but check the fine print before agreeing to anything.

   Free sites almost always have popups or require space invasive banners. Cheap hosting companies often fail on steps 3 and 4, so check them out first, or you may find your site is often not available to your visitors.

   Setup costs vary widely too. Basically, this is the cost that a company will charge to set up an account for you. This is justified if you are getting a lot of features included (see step 2). If you can get a money back guarantee, then you know the company is concerned about it’s customers. The longer the guarantee, the better. Seven days is not usually enough to judge if the company is suited to you but a month is long enough to find any major faults in their system.

If you follow the steps listed above, you should find the perfect hosting company for your needs.

Just Host offers:
* Unlimited GB’s of Space
* Unlimited GB’s of Transfer
* Unlimited Domain Hosting
* Unlimited E-Mail Accounts
* Unlimited MySQL Databases
* FREE Site Builder
* FREE Domain for Life
* FREE Instant Setup
* Anytime Money Back Guarantee
Price per month:
USD $3.45, AUD/CAN/SGD $3.95, £2.95, €3.45
Visit Just Host and check it out for yourself.