Compare Web Hosting

1. What is the purpose of your site?

The purpose of your site is an overall general picture of the type of project that you are going to be doing. If you are building a small personal or hobby site than the most basic type of hosting plan will be sufficient. If you are a business and plan on building a brand with a lot of visitors you should consider a decent shared or VPS (Virtual Private Server) plan. If you are Web designer and plan on building and reselling Web sites or starting a hosting company you will need to look into dedicated hosting plans. It all depends on the amount of ‘bandwidth’ you will be using with the host. Shared services allow many different accounts to be hosted on the same server, which degrades performance. VPS servers are somewhere in between shared and dedicated hosting, and are a good value for small businesses that are not quite ready for the cost of a dedicated box but desire better performance and more control over the server. Dedicated servers allow you to run your own server and therefore have the best possible performance.

2. What kind of features do you need for your Web site?

All plans that have been mentioned offer the tools and scripts that will be needed to build and maintain a Web site. Any hosting plan that you select should come with some type of control panel that allows you to manage your domain and install scripts, setup databases, view and maintain traffic logs and do backups of all files within your site. A plain static Web site will not require a lot of resources or additional scripts to run. If you plan on running a large database, hosting many images and videos, or running a large forum or virtual community than a shared hosting plan may not be the answer. If performance is important to you a VPS or dedicated solution is recommended, although most hosts allow quick and easy upgrade capabilities to a better hosting package if you outgrow the one you are using. One thing to consider if you select a VPS or dedicated solution is that you probably need some server experience or have a good technical background. There are ‘managed’ solutions available for a little bit more money that can help you setup your server properly help with problems that may arise.

3. What is your budget?

This may be the thing that dictates your hosting choice. Most budget based shared hosting plans start at $5.00 a month. Virtual Private Server plans start at around $50.00 a month and a good dedicated host can cost $150.00 or more. The saying you get what you pay for definitely applies to selecting a Web host. As long as you stick to some of the more well known Web hosting providers you should not have a problem with reliability, but many shared hosting plans can be oversold and you will experience slow performance from the start. If you have the money and technical know-how a VPS is a great place to start and should give you the resources you need for some time to come.

In summary, when comparing Web hosts you want to select a provider that meets your goals and fits within your budget. As a general rule of thumb, shared hosting is fine for individuals that want to host up to a few web sites. If you are a small business you can give shared hosting a try but may be unhappy with the performance. And finally if you are a business that plans on getting a good amount of traffic or require the most amount of resources possible than a dedicated server should be your choice.

You can compare web hosting at http://www.comparewebhosting4u.com and see the top Web hosting providers that are available today.