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How to Find a Web Hosting Plan That's Right for You
by Shana Brumlow

So you've designed your website and you just can't wait for the world to read it! First, you need to get it off of your computer and onto the internet for everyone to see. To do that, you will need to find a company to "host" your site, i.e. they will store your pages on their computer, which has a constant connection to the internet and allows others to access the pages.

There are several types of web hosting plans available on the net. They include free hosting, ISP hosting, paid web hosting, and dedicated servers. There no solution that will work for every website. Your decision to choose a hosting plan depends on what kind of website you have and what you plan to do with it. Let me start by explaining what the different types of hosting plans can do for you:

Free hosting

Free hosts, such as xoasis and geocities, generally work well for personal, non-profit websites. I do not recommend them for a business website because they look unprofessional. Their major benefit is that they are FREE, and many offer a generous amount of space, features, and bandwidth. But free hosts have to make money somehow, and that generally means that they will put banner ads and pop-up ads on your website that you have no control over and you don't make any money from. Some of the ads that pop up could be innappropriate for your readers. For instance, if you host a site that attracts children, it would not be ideal to have ads for casinos or dating services on your pages. To get a feel for the kind of ads that the web host uses, take a look at other websites that are hosted by the same service. For a list of popular free web hosts, visit http://www.thefreesite.com/Free_Web_Space/

ISP-Hosted

What company do you use to access the internet? Most ISP's offer ad-free webspace to their members for no additional fee. The downside is that sometimes there are restrictions as to how you can use the space. For example, some ISP's only allow you to host personal sites on this space. Just be sure to read their rules and restrictions carefully.

Although they usually give you a lot of disk space to use, you won't get a lot of the features that you can get with paid hosting, such as large bandwidth, site stats, and CGI access, but you can get a lot of these features from a company like bravenet.com.

The name of your website will probably start with the ISP's name. For example, my webspace that is provided by Mindspring (my ISP) is www.mindspring.com/~shana.brumlow. AOL uses members.aol.com/membername. This kind of web space is great for personal pages, and even works well for some small businesses. However, some people consider this type of address to look unprofessional, not to mention hard to remember. Just try fitting www.mindspring.com/~shana.brumlow/shirtdesigns/index.html on a business card!

However, you can purchase your own domain name (www.yourname.com) from someone like godaddy.com and, for a small fee, have it "point" to your website that's hosted by your ISP. For example, you can purchase www.yourname.com, and when someone types in that url, the first page of your site will appear. To see this example in action, type in the following address and watch how the address changes to an ISP-hosted address in your address bar: http://www.BrumlowDesignVentures.com

It's been rumored that search engines are starting to frown on websites hosted on free servers and ISP web space, but that hasn't been my experience--yet.

Paid Web Hosting

This is the ideal hosting solution for most businesses, large and small. They are professional looking and offer prices, packages and features for different kinds of websites, large and small.

When looking for a paid web host, you need to decide what kind of features you will need. You can use the list below to help you decide what is important:

Space: Hopefully, you've designed your website to load quickly and you have optimized your graphics so that your page sizes are relatively small. If this is the case, you really don't need to worry about how much space the host will give you. They will usually give you more space than you will know what to do with. However, if your site is full of photos or multimedia files, you will have to decide how much space your site will occupy. Add up the size of all of your html files along with any graphics and multimedia files that will need to sit on the server to determine how much space you will need. Be sure to leave room for future growth.

Bandwidth: The bandwidth is the amount of information that the server can handle in a period of time. Hosts usually provide a set amount of bandwidth per month (measured in MB or GB), and then charge you if you exceed that limit.

The amount of bandwidth you will need is determined by the size of your files and the number of visitors that you will expect. To get a rough estimate, you can multiply the size of your site (this is assuming that your visitors will visit every page on your site, which is probably unlikely), and multiply the size by the number of visitors you will expect per month. For example: If your site is 500K and you are expecting 500 visitors per month, your total bandwidth would be 250,000K (250 MB).Most reasonably priced web hosts will give you between 1-3 GB per month.

Speed: How fast are their servers? An easy way to determine this is by how quickly their home page loads. You can also ask!

FrontPage Extensions: If you are using Microsoft's FrontPage to design and maintain your site, make sure that the host supports FrontPage Extensions.

Scripting, Database support: If your website requires scripting or database support, make sure the host offers this. If you have forms on your website, you'll need CGI access (unless you're using a third party for this). You will also have to make sure that the host can support any Perl, ASP, SSI, Secure connections, or any other advanced scripting features that your website uses. If you are not sure if you need this kind of support, ask your website designer.

Mail: Do you want your own name@yourname.com email address? Do you need addresses for your employees? Make sure your host provides them. Usually, you get a set number of email addresses, and there is a small fee for each additional mailbox you want to add. You also need to make sure that their mail is compatible with the email program that you are using (Outlook, Eudora, etc.)

There are hundreds of web hosts on the internet and they all offer different packages that start at around $8 per month all the way up to hundreds of dollars per month. My personal favorite is iPowerWeb.com. Starting at $7.95 per month, they make it very easy to set up a website, and they will also help you register a domain name.

Dedicated Servers

This is an advanced option that is not for the faint at heart! This option is only necessary if you are getting TONS of traffic every month that your host cannot handle. You actually buy the server hardware and take it to a service provider. They hook it up and maintain it for you for a not-so-small fee.

There is a lot to consider when choosing a website host, but in the long run, it's worth the time that you spend educating yourself on the differences and comparing services and prices. Ideally, you will choose a great host the first time, and you will never have to worry about this chore again for the life of your website.

(c) 2002-3 Shana Brumlow. All rights reserved. Article reprint permission is granted provided the entire article - including resource information below - remains intact and unaltered.

About the author: Shana Brumlow is a professional graphic designer and owner of Brumlow Design Ventures. You can visit her design portfolio each week for a new informative article on graphic design and website design. Her design portfolio and other exciting sites she has created can be found at http://www.BrumlowDesignVentures.com

**If you use this article in your website or newsletter, please let me know. I might be able to link back to you somewhere on this site. Thanks!

Copyright ©2002, Shana Brumlow, Graphic Designer

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