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What to look for in a good web host?
While choosing a good web hosting company for your organization may seem simple enough, the variety of the market and the sheer volume of choices and options should force you to take a moment to take a close look at which one of the available options are best for you. The following are some of the top features you should look for while selecting a good web host company.
· Reliability – To select a web hosting company, the first thing you should look at is reliability. Find out how experienced the web host is – how long have they been in business? Read public reviews about the web host. The most efficient way to find a good web host company is by asking people who have used the web host itself. There are a number of groups and forums online that are dedicated to web hosts and web hosting services – so you should have no problem finding input form web hosting customers.
· Customer Support Panel – Every website has problems or issues occasionally. In those circumstances, when you need professional assistance, you need to know whether or not the customer support panel will be able to help you. Any web host company worth its salt should be able to quickly repair any problem with your website. This means that a good web host company provides 24x7 support. If you can’t reach them 24 hours a day, don’t bother hosting with them.
· CGI Access – CGI is a facility that provides users with the ability to run their own programs on the server. Initially, when a website is small, or new, this may not appear to be a critical concern. However, as the company grows, you will need to have as much control as possible over the functionality of your website. This means that the web hosting company you choose should provide you with CGI access that allows you to read, write and execute any scripting on the server.
· POP Account – Safety and security is king on the Internet. A number of hackers are constantly on the prowl to steal your money and your company information. In order to protect yourself and your website, you need to be confident that the web host will provide you with a POP account, which will provide you with password-protected access to emails sent to your e-mail address on the website.
· Domain Name – The domain name of your website is your identity on the Internet. Because of this, you need to be sure that the domain name that the web host provides to you includes the name of your business or has the targeted keywords that you would like in your domain name. It is recommended that you work with a web host that allows users to select their own domain name.
· Storage Space and Bandwidth – Depending on the size of your business and your needs, you should find a web hosting company that offers enough storage space and bandwidth for your needs. The last thing you need is to run out of bandwidth when you are in the middle of conducting business with customers through your website.
Compare The Top 5 Best Web Hosting Companies 
Start Logic
GoDaddy Hosting
EasyCGI Hosting
Lunarpages
Host MonsterBasic Hosting Plans
Starts at $3.95/month
60 GB Storage
600GB Transfer
Free Domain and Setup
Free Site Builder
Wordpress Themes, Blogging and Forum Tools
Starts at $3.99/month
30 GB Storage
300GB Transfer
10 MySQL Databases, 500 Free Email Accounts
Free Ad Credits
Starting at $7.96/month
350GB Storage
3,500GB Transfer
Website Builder
No Setup Fees,
Merchant Accounts Avaiable, Supports wide programming features
Starts at $4.95/month
500 MB Storage
50GB Transfer
10 Email Accounts
PH, MySQL and CGI Support
All accounts start at $6.95/month and have 1,500GB Storage
15,000 GB Transfer
Unlimited Domains
PHP Support, Unlimited Auto-responders and more!
Mid Hosting Plans
Starts at: $5.95/month
100 GB Storage
1,000 GB Transfer
Host Unlimited Domains
Credits for Adwords and Yahoo Search
Starts at $6.99/month
150 GB Storage
1,500 GB Transfer
1,000 Free Email Accounts
25 SQL databases, other feature same as basic
Starts at $15.96/month
300 GB Storage
30,000 Transfer
Features of Basic plus: Microsoft Index Server, more email accounts, etc.
Starts at $9.95/month
5,000 MB Storage
250GB Transfer
Unlimited Mailboxes, and support of Basic plan
All accounts start at $6.95/month and have 1,500GB Storage
15,000 GB Transfer
Unlimited Domains
PHP Support, Unlimited Auto-responders and more!
Professional Plans
Starts at: $8.95/month
1,500 GB Storage
15,000 GB Transfer
Choice of Shopping Carts and Site Builders plus features of Basic and Mid Hosting
Starts at $14.99/month
300 GB Storage
3,000 GB Transfer
2,000 Email Accounts
50 Databases
Free SSL Certificate and More!
Starts at $21.56/month
750GB Storage
75,000 GB Transfer. All features of basic and plus including more email, domains, etc.
Starts at $21.56/month
750GB Storage
75,000 GB Transfer. All features of basic and plus including more email, domains, etc.
All accounts start at $6.95/month and have 1,500GB Storage
15,000 GB Transfer
Unlimited Domains
PHP Support, Unlimited Auto-responders and more!
VPS Packages
Starts at $29.95/month
Unlimited Website and Domain Hosting
Up to 60 GB Storage
Up to 2 TB Transfer
Supports MySQL, PHP 5, Fedora, and Apache
Starts at $29.99/month
Up to 50 GB Storage
Up to 2TB Bandwidth
Up to 3 Dedicated IP’s
Full Admin Access
Starting at $43.96/month
Up to 50GB Disk Space
Up to 2TB Transfer
Up to 1GB RAM
Unlimited websites on up to 2 IP addresses.
Starting at $39.99/month
Up to 60Gb Storage
Up to 2TB Transfer
Up to 1GB RAM Guaranteed, max 12GB RAM
Up to 3 IP Addresses.
None
Dedicated Server Packages
Starts at $99/month
Up to 1TB Disk Space
Up to 4GB Memory
Up to 3TB Transfer
Starting at $79.99/month
Intel Processors
Up to 600GB Storage and 2TB Bandwidth
Full Admin Access
Starting at $43.96/month
Up to 50GB Disk Space
Up to 2TB Transfer
Up to 1GB RAM
Unlimited websites on up to 2 IP addresses.
Starting at $129.95/month
Up to 5 IP Addresses
Up to 250GB Storage and 2TB Transfer
Up to 8GB RAM
None
Keep in mind that there are many inferior web hosts on the market. However, an experienced and reputed web host is the one who will provide you with the long-term and valuable web hosting solutions.
Additional factors that you should consider when choosing a web hosting company includes a user-friendly site building program, shopping carts, Blogs, forums and scripting functionality. In some cases, you may want .NET service, while in others, you may look for PHP. You may also require a particular CMS that is available only with some of the hosts.
One kind of web hosting is shared hosting, in which, various websites are positioned in a single server component linked to the Internet. Each website is given its own space, partition and section on the server, thus, separating it from the other websites. This method of hosting is extremely cost-effective, as many people get to share the total cost of maintaining the web server. Shared hosting can be done in two ways - Name based and IP based. In the name based method, there are various host names on a single individual machine, while in the IP based method, each individual host has its own IP address. One of the central benefits of using the IP based method is that it can employ its own SSL certificate.
If your website has started receiving a lot of traffic as well as SQL requests, then you can end up bogging down the shared server and can dissatisfying other customers. In such a scenario, you can opt to move onto a dedicated server or a Virtual Private Server (VPS). A VPS will provide you with root-level access to your server simply like that in a shared hosting account. In comparison to dedicated hosting, VPS is quite cost-effective, but dedicated ones have better configuration of the hardware and better performance. With a VPS plan, the users will still share the physical resources but will be able to enjoy a private server. With a dedicated plan, you have the entire web server all to yourself.