Web hosting is a very competitive business and hence choosing one is not easy. Hosting providers do all kinds of gimmicks to lure you in. They have even gone to the extend of promoting sites which write negative reviews of other service providers! In this post, I will look at the key factors you should consider before purchasing your Web hosting.

The following suggestions may be helpful:

1. Storage Space: Must be enough to take care of your present needs and future needs. If you are expecting to add more content or information you have to select a service that will give you adequate space sufficient enough atleast for a few years.

2. Advertisements: See what type of advertisements are allowed on the site. If the hosting service inserts pop ups and pop downs in each page you will be at a disadvantage at your site visitors may not like it. Text links from the hosting service is a better option. Better still if they allow you to host your own banners and text links besides theirs. Some services also let you register your site with other advertisers to earn some revenue through pay per clicks or commission based sales.

3. Tools: See what tools and resources the hosting service provides besides the storage space. Some hosting services are extra generous in providing free website building tools, scripts to make your site more interactive and options to create secure web pages. Some hosting services even allow you to point your site to a registered domain, besides letting your have free email accounts with your own domain.

Answered by .... ..... , an ibibo Master, at 5:48 AM on July 12, 2008

Web hosting is a very competitive business and hence choosing one is not easy. Hosting providers do all kinds of gimmicks to lure you in. They have even gone to the extend of promoting sites which write negative reviews of other service providers! In this post, I will look at the key factors you should consider before purchasing your Web hosting.

The following suggestions may be helpful:

1. Storage Space: Must be enough to take care of your present needs and future needs. If you are expecting to add more content or information you have to select a service that will give you adequate space sufficient enough atleast for a few years.

2. Advertisements: See what type of advertisements are allowed on the site. If the hosting service inserts pop ups and pop downs in each page you will be at a disadvantage at your site visitors may not like it. Text links from the hosting service is a better option. Better still if they allow you to host your own banners and text links besides theirs. Some services also let you register your site with other advertisers to earn some revenue through pay per clicks or commission based sales.

3. Tools: See what tools and resources the hosting service provides besides the storage space. Some hosting services are extra generous in providing free website building tools, scripts to make your site more interactive and options to create secure web pages. Some hosting services even allow you to point your site to a registered domain, besides letting your have free email accounts with your own domain.

4. Bandwidth: This is a very important consideration. Many free web hosting services provided limited bandwidth, which means your site will have problems or it may be on hold once it exceeds the specified bandwidth. Look for a service that provides adequate bandwidth depending upon what your needs are.

5. Technolgy Platform. If you are aiming to build a website that uses propriety technology such as asp or . net or MS SQL you may have to select a hosting service that provides matching technology platform such as windows platform. If you intend to build a database driven website you may have to see whether your database is compatible with the hosting environment and whether your hosting company can protect it form unauthorized intrusion or data corruption.

6. Reliability: Make sure that the hosting service has adequate resources and technical know how to maintain and manage your website/s in the long run. Check their background, how many sites they are hosting, how secure are their servers, how they are growing and what is their source of revenue other than advertisement revenue.

7. Privacy Concerns: Your hosting service may run programs in the background on the server side to gather information about the visitors who might visit your site. Check their privacy policy and how they use the information.

Answered by Nagendra , an ibibo Master, at 6:38 PM on July 10, 2008

The following suggestions may be helpful:

1. Storage Space: Must be enough to take care of your present needs and future needs. If you are expecting to add more content or information you have to select a service that will give you adequate space sufficient enough atleast for a few years.

2. Advertisements: See what type of advertisements are allowed on the site. If the hosting service inserts pop ups and pop downs in each page you will be at a disadvantage at your site visitors may not like it. Text links from the hosting service is a better option. Better still if they allow you to host your own banners and text links besides theirs. Some services also let you register your site with other advertisers to earn some revenue through pay per clicks or commission based sales.

3. Tools: See what tools and resources the hosting service provides besides the storage space. Some hosting services are extra generous in providing free website building tools, scripts to make your site more interactive and options to create secure web pages. Some hosting services even allow you to point your site to a registered domain, besides letting your have free email accounts with your own domain.

4. Bandwidth: This is a very important consideration. Many free web hosting services provided limited bandwidth, which means your site will have problems or it may be on hold once it exceeds the specified bandwidth. Look for a service that provides adequate bandwidth depending upon what your needs are.

5. Technolgy Platform. If you are aiming to build a website that uses propriety technology such as asp or . net or MS SQL you may have to select a hosting service that provides matching technology platform such as windows platform. If you intend to build a database driven website you may have to see whether your database is compatible with the hosting environment and whether your hosting company can protect it form unauthorized intrusion or data corruption.

6. Reliability: Make sure that the hosting service has adequate resources and technical know how to maintain and manage your website/s in the long run. Check their background, how many sites they are hosting, how secure are their servers, how they are growing and what is their source of revenue other than advertisement revenue.

7. Privacy Concerns: Your hosting service may run programs in the background on the server side to gather information about the visitors who might visit your site. Check their privacy policy and how they use the information.

Answered by Raksha , an ibibo Master, at 10:05 PM on June 19, 2008

You have been running one or more blogs/sites on free hosting providers such as blogspot. One day you decide to move your sites to a professional Web hosting provider. But the problem is which one to use?

Web hosting is a very competitive business and hence choosing one is not easy. Hosting providers do all kinds of gimmicks to lure you in. They have even gone to the extend of promoting sites which write negative reviews of other service providers! In this post, I will look at the key factors you should consider before purchasing your Web hosting.

Note that Web hosting is different from domain registration. It is possible to register domain somewhere else than the hosting provider. In certain cases it is better and cheaper to register your site with a different company.

1. What is your traffic requirements? - This is something which you must evaluate carefully. Some Web hosts offer terabytes of data transfer per month, while some others offer only a few gigabytes. If your intention is to host a personal blog and you don’t plan to be an A-list blogger, few gigabytes per month is ok. But if you think you may have more than 1000 visitors per day, go with a service which gives you atleast 1 terabyte transfer per month. Another important factor to keep in mind is that this limit includes your uploads, downloads and user access to the site.

2. Do you need shell access? - Not all Web hosts provide shell access. In fact, very few provide shell access. But for certain things, shell access is a must. For example, consider a case where you want to configure your cron settings or sometimes you may want to install custom software on your server. But even when you have shell access, you may not be able to run all the applications. This is because there could be resource usage limits on CPU, memory etc. For example, Dreamhost provides shell access, but Godaddy doesn’t.

3. Dedicated virtual server or shared hosting? - Web hosting comes in different varieties. You can have shared hosting, dedicated virtual server or dedicated physical server. Dedicated physical server means you have a dedicated machine for your site. This gives maximum flexibility, but is very costly as well. Dedicated physical servers are needed when you have large Web applications which are resource intensive. Dedicated virtual server hosting provides a virtual machine which for all practical purposes behaves like a separate machine. This service used to be costly, but these days it is becoming comparable to shared hosting. Dedicated virtual server protects your site from other sites that are running on the hosting providers network. In shared hosting, resources such as memory and CPU are shared with other customers. Hence depending on the behavior of your neighbors, your site may go down!

4. Unlimited Emails, Unlimited Databases, Unlimited Domains? - These days a lot of Web hosts provide unlimited email accounts, databases and domains. For most us, unlimited doesn’t mean much since we probably need a few databases and domains. But before you purchase hosting, do check these. This is important since some of the providers charge you for additional domain hosting!

5. Server uptime requirements? - It is rare that you have 100% uptime for shared hosting. But some providers do achieve over 99.99% of uptime. If your site is critical enought that you can’t have even a minute of downtime, go with a provider who offers 100% uptime. But that is rare and in my opinion, go with a provider who is honest when something goes wrong (for example - dreamhost).

Answered by Madhurima , an ibibo Master, at 6:05 PM on June 17, 2008

hi there

You have been running one or more blogs/sites on free hosting providers such as blogspot. One day you decide to move your sites to a professional Web hosting provider. But the problem is which one to use?

Web hosting is a very competitive business and hence choosing one is not easy. Hosting providers do all kinds of gimmicks to lure you in. They have even gone to the extend of promoting sites which write negative reviews of other service providers! In this post, I will look at the key factors you should consider before purchasing your Web hosting.

Note that Web hosting is different from domain registration. It is possible to register domain somewhere else than the hosting provider. In certain cases it is better and cheaper to register your site with a different company.

1. What is your traffic requirements? - This is something which you must evaluate carefully. Some Web hosts offer terabytes of data transfer per month, while some others offer only a few gigabytes. If your intention is to host a personal blog and you don’t plan to be an A-list blogger, few gigabytes per month is ok. But if you think you may have more than 1000 visitors per day, go with a service which gives you atleast 1 terabyte transfer per month. Another important factor to keep in mind is that this limit includes your uploads, downloads and user access to the site.

2. Do you need shell access? - Not all Web hosts provide shell access. In fact, very few provide shell access. But for certain things, shell access is a must. For example, consider a case where you want to configure your cron settings or sometimes you may want to install custom software on your server. But even when you have shell access, you may not be able to run all the applications. This is because there could be resource usage limits on CPU, memory etc. For example, Dreamhost provides shell access, but Godaddy doesn’t.

3. Dedicated virtual server or shared hosting? - Web hosting comes in different varieties. You can have shared hosting, dedicated virtual server or dedicated physical server. Dedicated physical server means you have a dedicated machine for your site. This gives maximum flexibility, but is very costly as well. Dedicated physical servers are needed when you have large Web applications which are resource intensive. Dedicated virtual server hosting provides a virtual machine which for all practical purposes behaves like a separate machine. This service used to be costly, but these days it is becoming comparable to shared hosting. Dedicated virtual server protects your site from other sites that are running on the hosting providers network. In shared hosting, resources such as memory and CPU are shared with other customers. Hence depending on the behavior of your neighbors, your site may go down!

4. Unlimited Emails, Unlimited Databases, Unlimited Domains? - These days a lot of Web hosts provide unlimited email accounts, databases and domains. For most us, unlimited doesn’t mean much since we probably need a few databases and domains. But before you purchase hosting, do check these. This is important since some of the providers charge you for additional domain hosting!

5. Server uptime requirements? - It is rare that you have 100% uptime for shared hosting. But some providers do achieve over 99.99% of uptime. If your site is critical enought that you can’t have even a minute of downtime, go with a provider who offers 100% uptime. But that is rare and in my opinion, go with a provider who is honest when something goes wrong (for example - dreamhost).

Answered by Reeta K , an ibibo Master, at 6:23 PM on June 13, 2008

well prashant, it is important to know how you will find the right one that is suitable for your requirements. The following suggestions may be helpful:

1. Storage Space: Must be enough to take care of your present needs and future needs. If you are expecting to add more content or information you have to select a service that will give you adequate space sufficient enough atleast for a few years.

2. Advertisements: See what type of advertisements are allowed on the site. If the hosting service inserts pop ups and pop downs in each page you will be at a disadvantage at your site visitors may not like it. Text links from the hosting service is a better option. Better still if they allow you to host your own banners and text links besides theirs. Some services also let you register your site with other advertisers to earn some revenue through pay per clicks or commission based sales.

3. Tools: See what tools and resources the hosting service provides besides the storage space. Some hosting services are extra generous in providing free website building tools, scripts to make your site more interactive and options to create secure web pages. Some hosting services even allow you to point your site to a registered domain, besides letting your have free email accounts with your own domain.

4. Bandwidth: This is a very important consideration. Many free web hosting services provided limited bandwidth, which means your site will have problems or it may be on hold once it exceeds the specified bandwidth. Look for a service that provides adequate bandwidth depending upon what your needs are.

Answered by satyaiitk , an ibibo Master, at 10:33 AM on June 13, 2008

well, Web hosting is a very competitive business and hence choosing one is not easy. Hosting providers do all kinds of gimmicks to lure you in. They have even gone to the extend of promoting sites which write negative reviews of other service providers! In this post, I will look at the key factors you should consider before purchasing your Web hosting.

Note that Web hosting is different from domain registration. It is possible to register domain somewhere else than the hosting provider. In certain cases it is better and cheaper to register your site with a different company.

1. What is your traffic requirements? - This is something which you must evaluate carefully. Some Web hosts offer terabytes of data transfer per month, while some others offer only a few gigabytes. If your intention is to host a personal blog and you don’t plan to be an A-list blogger, few gigabytes per month is ok. But if you think you may have more than 1000 visitors per day, go with a service which gives you atleast 1 terabyte transfer per month. Another important factor to keep in mind is that this limit includes your uploads, downloads and user access to the site.

2. Do you need shell access? - Not all Web hosts provide shell access. In fact, very few provide shell access. But for certain things, shell access is a must. For example, consider a case where you want to configure your cron settings or sometimes you may want to install custom software on your server. But even when you have shell access, you may not be able to run all the applications. This is because there could be resource usage limits on CPU, memory etc. For example, Dreamhost provides shell access, but Godaddy doesn’t.

3. Dedicated virtual server or shared hosting? - Web hosting comes in different varieties. You can have shared hosting, dedicated virtual server or dedicated physical server. Dedicated physical server means you have a dedicated machine for your site. This gives maximum flexibility, but is very costly as well. Dedicated physical servers are needed when you have large Web applications which are resource intensive. Dedicated virtual server hosting provides a virtual machine which for all practical purposes behaves like a separate machine. This service used to be costly, but these days it is becoming comparable to shared hosting. Dedicated virtual server protects your site from other sites that are running on the hosting providers network. In shared hosting, resources such as memory and CPU are shared with other customers. Hence depending on the behavior of your neighbors, your site may go down!

4. Unlimited Emails, Unlimited Databases, Unlimited Domains? - These days a lot of Web hosts provide unlimited email accounts, databases and domains. For most us, unlimited doesn’t mean much since we probably need a few databases and domains. But before you purchase hosting, do check these. This is important since some of the providers charge you for additional domain hosting!

Answered by Saurabh , an ibibo Master, at 7:39 AM on June 13, 2008

hello prashant Consider this scenario. You have been running one or more blogs/sites on free hosting providers such as blogspot. One day you decide to move your sites to a professional Web hosting provider. But the problem is which one to use?

Web hosting is a very competitive business and hence choosing one is not easy. Hosting providers do all kinds of gimmicks to lure you in. They have even gone to the extend of promoting sites which write negative reviews of other service providers! In this post, I will look at the key factors you should consider before purchasing your Web hosting.

Note that Web hosting is different from domain registration. It is possible to register domain somewhere else than the hosting provider. In certain cases it is better and cheaper to register your site with a different company.

1. What is your traffic requirements? - This is something which you must evaluate carefully. Some Web hosts offer terabytes of data transfer per month, while some others offer only a few gigabytes. If your intention is to host a personal blog and you don’t plan to be an A-list blogger, few gigabytes per month is ok. But if you think you may have more than 1000 visitors per day, go with a service which gives you atleast 1 terabyte transfer per month. Another important factor to keep in mind is that this limit includes your uploads, downloads and user access to the site.

2. Do you need shell access? - Not all Web hosts provide shell access. In fact, very few provide shell access. But for certain things, shell access is a must. For example, consider a case where you want to configure your cron settings or sometimes you may want to install custom software on your server. But even when you have shell access, you may not be able to run all the applications. This is because there could be resource usage limits on CPU, memory etc. For example, Dreamhost provides shell access, but Godaddy doesn’t.

3. Dedicated virtual server or shared hosting? - Web hosting comes in different varieties. You can have shared hosting, dedicated virtual server or dedicated physical server. Dedicated physical server means you have a dedicated machine for your site. This gives maximum flexibility, but is very costly as well. Dedicated physical servers are needed when you have large Web applications which are resource intensive. Dedicated virtual server hosting provides a virtual machine which for all practical purposes behaves like a separate machine. This service used to be costly, but these days it is becoming comparable to shared hosting. Dedicated virtual server protects your site from other sites that are running on the hosting providers network. In shared hosting, resources such as memory and CPU are shared with other customers. Hence depending on the behavior of your neighbors, your site may go down!

4. Unlimited Emails, Unlimited Databases, Unlimited Domains? - These days a lot of Web hosts provide unlimited email accounts, databases and domains. For most us, unlimited doesn’t mean much since we probably need a few databases and domains. But before you purchase hosting, do check these. This is important since some of the providers charge you for additional domain hosting!

5. Server uptime requirements? - It is rare that you have 100% uptime for shared hosting. But some providers do achieve over 99.99% of uptime. If your site is critical enought that you can’t have even a minute of downtime, go with a provider who offers 100% uptime. But that is rare and in my opinion, go with a provider who is honest when something goes wrong (for example - dreamhost).

6. Server software requirements? - Some hosts don’t allow custom software installation. In that case ensure that the software they have on their server is what you need! For example, not all hosts provide Ruby on Rails support. It may not be easy to find out the server software versions from the hosting providers site, but ta

Answered by Arti singh , an ibibo Specialist, at 5:20 AM on June 13, 2008

well, it is important to know how you will find the right one that is suitable for your requirements. The following suggestions may be helpful:

1. Storage Space: Must be enough to take care of your present needs and future needs. If you are expecting to add more content or information you have to select a service that will give you adequate space sufficient enough atleast for a few years.

2. Advertisements: See what type of advertisements are allowed on the site. If the hosting service inserts pop ups and pop downs in each page you will be at a disadvantage at your site visitors may not like it. Text links from the hosting service is a better option. Better still if they allow you to host your own banners and text links besides theirs. Some services also let you register your site with other advertisers to earn some revenue through pay per clicks or commission based sales.

3. Tools: See what tools and resources the hosting service provides besides the storage space. Some hosting services are extra generous in providing free website building tools, scripts to make your site more interactive and options to create secure web pages. Some hosting services even allow you to point your site to a registered domain, besides letting your have free email accounts with your own domain.

4. Bandwidth: This is a very important consideration. Many free web hosting services provided limited bandwidth, which means your site will have problems or it may be on hold once it exceeds the specified bandwidth. Look for a service that provides adequate bandwidth depending upon what your needs are.

Answered by Uttam , an ibibo Master, at 8:24 PM on June 12, 2008