What Type Of Hosting Package Do I Need?

By Author: Elad Domb
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Shopping for a web hosting package should not be a difficult task. Unfortunately, when you start to research, you can get bombarded with so many different options and industry jargon that it can get overwhelming. Having some basic knowledge of the web hosting industry and what your options are can help to simplify the decision-making process. Here's an outline of the basics to help you decide on what hosting package you need.

What do you Need to set up a Website?

Setting up a website requires a few basic elements. First, you will need a domain name. This is the name of your website with a suffix at the end of it, such as www.websitename.com or www.websitename.net. In most instances, you will purchase your domain name through your hosting provider. Some include the cost of the domain in the hosting package while others charge an annual fee for the domain name. The second thing you need is a host server for your website. There are various types of hosting options and we'll talk about them in more details shortly. Lastly, you need the services of a web designer or a Content Management System to create templates ...
... and upload the content of your site.

Considerations for Your Website That Affect Your Choice of Hosting Packages

Before looking at your hosting options, you should know what your website requirements are. If you plan to have an e-commerce site then you are likely to have a database showcasing your various products. You will need a larger hosting package and one that can integrate with your database applications. If your website is a corporate marketing type site, you can opt for a simpler hosting package. Keep in mind though that extensive graphics, videos and picture do take up quite a lot of disk space and you will need to make allowances for this. Also consider how many people are working in the business. Will you need to network your system? How many email addresses will you need? Will you have a dedicated website administrator or is that a role that you as the business owner will fulfill? You also need to consider how often you plan to update your website. How extensive will these updates be? Will they involve adding newsletters, articles, blogs or pictures? Will the content be consistently increasing or will the updates replace existing content? These may seem like insignificant details but thinking about these things when you set up your website will make routine maintenance much easier down the line.

What Types of Hosting Options are Available?

Generally, there are two types of hosting. The first is shared hosting and the second is dedicated hosting. A dedicated server provides greater control over your server and website. You can manage your own computer network and server. You also have the full volume of your server capacity available to use. While this all sounds appealing, unless you are a huge corporate organization it's unlikely that you will have your website hosted on a dedicated server. It requires a full-time IT department in order to operate and maintain the system and works out to be quite costly on a monthly basis.

Most small- to medium-sized businesses opt for shared hosting. This is the most economical way to set up a website. Shared hosting is as the name implies; many websites are hosting on the same server which is maintained by the hosting service provider. Within shared hosting, there are generally a variety of options. Each option will cater for differently sized web hosting packages. Typically, you will get a number of email addresses, a volume of disk space and a volume of traffic. You may pay a one-time set-up fee or this may be free if you take an extended web hosting package. You should have a level of spam protection built into your hosting package. It is also useful if your hosting provider can provide you with statistics of your website. These statistics generally show traffic usage, source of users, and highlight keywords that have been used to search content of your site. This information can be very useful when optimizing your site for search engines.

Things to be Wary of With Web Hosting Providers

Unfortunately, there are some less reputable service providers that promise a great deal and then don't deliver. Many offer great prices and then oversubscribe their servers. The result is that server response time is slow and servers frequently go down. It's very important to know if the hosting provider has a reliable helpdesk or support service. When comparing hosting providers, it's a good idea to do an online search and read up on some independent industry reviews. This will give you a fairly good idea who is recommended in the industry and who can be trusted with hosting your website.
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