Choosing a Web Hosting Service

Given the sheer number of web hosting providers, making the decision as to which one to go with can become a daunting task. What many people don't realize is that the wrong choice can introduce a "single point of failure" into your otherwise successful online business. In this articles, I will discuss some of the major factors you should consider before you make that choice.

SPACE AND BANDWIDTH

The most common thing people look for in a hosting provider is the amount of disk storage space and "bandwidth" available to them. While these are certainly important, they should not alone be the deciding factors. Truth is, most providers today allocate more disk space and bandwidth than most people would need. As I explained in an earlier article, 5-10 Gigabytes (or more) of storage is A LOT of storage. Most people will never need this much. If you already have your website designed and ready to go on your own computer, simply right-click the folder and select properties to determine how much space it requires. Even if you use backend databases (e.g., MySQL, MS ACCESS), the vast majority of sites would never come close to requiring 5GB or more. As long as the hosting providers you are considering give you that 5GB or more, you will be fine in all but a few rare cases. If you discover you need more at a later time, make sure your provider gives you an easy upgrade path to a hosting plan with a higher allocation.

The same thing applies to bandwidth. Many, if not most, providers now give bandwidth allocatioins of 200Gb/month or more. That amount would be more than adequate for most small businesses. Let's look at an example. If each visitor to your site uses, on average, 1MB of bandwidth to surf through your pages, a 200GB/month bandwidth allocation would handle 200,000 visitors/month. Even if each visitor browsed an average of 10MB on your site (which is HIGHLY unlikely), you could still handle 20.000 visitors/month. Of course, if your business really explodes into a huge success, your failsafe fallback position is choosing a hosting provider that allows for a painless upgrade path.

SHARED VS. DEDICATED HOSTING

In a shared hosting environment, your site is placed on a server that also provides hosting for a number of other people. You have your own space, your own domain and the rest, but other people are also using the resources of that server for their sites. There is no risk of your pages showing up on the other person’s site, or vice versa. Each site has it’s own unique set of folders, logins, and so forth.

Besides the fact that shared hosting costs considerably less, the important consideration for most people is that the hosting company support staff administers the server. If there is a problem with the server, they have to fix it, not you. When the operating system or other system software needs to be upgraded, they do it. All you worry about is your own site and the pages contained on it.