Today, web hosting plans are one of the most important considerations of more or less every webmaster. There are a lot of business web hosting plans that are excellent and yet very affordable. One who is serious about his or her business can suffer later on, if his or her decision when choosing a web host was wrong. If you have decided to purchase a web hosting plan for your website, you need to see whether it contains the basic features relevant to your needs.
If you make a poor choice of a web hosting plan you can potentially face losses from a decrease in sales as well as losing the customers if your site is not reliable and available. One should not make this decision in haste, rather you should study all the options and compare all the advantages as well as disadvantages, then make the decision accordingly. If the decision is made after studying every aspect only then may it prove fruitful for the business. Moreover, unlimited hosting plans may sound very tempting especially if you operate numerous small business websites but they are not all they are hyped up to be.
There are some unlimited web hosting plans that place no limit on how many domains you may operate for some flat monthly rate that seems very attractive. There are still other plans that allow you to operate 10, or 20, or even 30 or more domains; this can appear to be truly unlimited and a great deal for most people. And then there are plans that give you unlimited space and bandwidth. These however are the equivalent of the retail loss leader.
The question one must ask is what do I really need in a hosting package? Most unlimited plans provide more than any average business will ever need, and there are some drawbacks to unlimited hosting on a shared server, which is what you get if you are paying less than $100.00 a month to host on a virtual private server (VPS) or dedicated server both of which do not offer unlimited plans without paying hundreds of dollars a month. On a shared server disk space is limited, often so is bandwidth. If one site is extremely large and uses lots of bandwidth, other smaller sites may suffer. This phenomenon is called overselling. The hosting provider is selling more resources than they have and betting it won’t get used. If it does, clients suffer. A limited shared hosting plan may provide great value for your money while ensuring you get better stability, uptime, and reliability which is really what you want and are paying for.
So what does the average business need for resources on a shared hosting plan? Unless you have a huge database or site 500mb to 1Gb of disk space is plenty, bandwidth should be a minimum of 1Gb with the ability to add more if needed. For databases, 10 should be fine, if you need more than 10 you may need a VPS or dedicated server. When it comes to how many domains you can host, how many do you own? If you have 20 domains, and they all point to the same site then you need at least 20 parked domains. If you have 20 domains each with their own site you need at least 20 add-on domains. Normally parked and add-on domains come unlimited with a package.
So what would a good package look like for an individual or small business? It would be 500mb to 1Gb of disk space, 1Gb+ of bandwidth, unlimited FTP accounts, email accounts, parked domains, and add-on domains and from 10 to 50 databases.
Web hosting plans have the capability to make or break your business. It is necessary to choose the right web hosting plan and look at certain aspects of that plan so that your choice will help your business to prosper. One must choose a plan according to the nature of the website required for the business. Every web hosting account provides a unique set of functionality.
An effective web hosting plan is very significant in providing the best surfing experience possible to your customers. It is highly recommended to use a web hosting provider rather than self hosting. As the competition is becoming hotter among the hosting companies, many enticing hosting plans are coming out. The one hosting plan which small businesses and companies should avail themselves of is the shared web hosting plan. Though the hosting companies profit from this type of hosting plan, it is a great means of cutting cost for the companies that are using it. A Shared hosting company hosts your website on its own physical servers for a monthly fee. While, dedicated hosting means your web server is sitting on its own box, owned and managed by the service provider and generally costs 10 to 30 times more than shared hosting.
Overall shared web hosting is a cost effective, reliable way to get your website up and running for your clients while minimizing your costs and administration. Some research is involved in choosing the best provider, but in the long run time spent now will pay off in the future.