Joom Tech Ease

The best webhosting plan for you will depend on your goals for your new website. If you are simply putting together a website to store some personal files, then you are not going to need all the bells and whistles. Similarly, if you don’t expect a lot of traffic, other than from a few friends who want to see what your new blog post is about, you can get by with minimal requirements and don’t really need to pay attention to the features. The cheapest plan available, or even free webhosting platforms, would probably do the trick.

However, where you need to start paying more attention is if you expect to build a website as a business, or if you are working to build something that will have steady traffic. There are still a number of low pricing options for you to choose from, but the best webhosting plan you can find may be worth paying for. The best webhosting programs will include:

* Free Set Up

* Unlimited domains

* Unlimited emails

* Unlimited ftp accounts

* Free website builder programs

* Plenty of email addresses

* PHP and MySQL

* Fantastico with blog and forum scripts

* 24/7 support via chat, phone and email

* Large storage space and bandwidth

Your best bet may be to start with a cheap webhosting plan and then scale up when you need to grow. Any hosting company that has 24 hour support can bump you up to the next package in a matter of minutes. What you do want to be concerned about, however, is the up-time. A website that is constant down can be frustrating, and it can cost you a lot of time when you are trying to get work accomplished over the weekend and your website is not live.

For a beginner often cheap web hosting sounds attractive however it is not at all the best choice. It is often seen that one who first opts for cheap web hosting afterwards finds some problem.

For the amateur webmaster, “every business decision is a balance between cost and benefit “as for them it’s easy to forget this principle and blindly follow the well-intentioned advice of industry veterans. Generally this is a good thing to do. Especially when it comes to one’s business, no advice should be followed blindly. None of those extraordinary webmasters have the viewpoint to say exactly what is right in any particular set of circumstances apart from all their knowledge and proficiency.

Consider this before one cast aside cheap web hosting as a viable option for one’s site: In their initial start-up period very few eCommerce sites observe much traffic. Work one will be doing over the coming months and years will be largely investigational like honing and tweaking site, testing traffic and consumer response from a number of different advertising sources, and normally figuring out how to build one’s business.

One should always host sites on a cheap web host during the initial phases of any new online venture. One need not buy an expensive dedicated server or rack space for a project that might not work out at all. Even if it does work out, there might be very little benefit in paying the additional cost in the early months when traffic is virtually zero. Choosing a low-cost hosting plan that has a decent reputation for uptime and service, and leaves room for growth is the solution.

Never overbuy hosting for any of the web sites, but buy what is required. In short, walk the web hosting line. This generally means shared .NET hosting in the $10 per month range for a fresh site. Add on a-la-carte features such as SSL certificates as the sites grow. I look to upgraded packages wherever I might find them when traffic or disk space begins to stretch the bounds of the original plan. One can sometimes find really good deals on hosting with a bit of shopping around –VPS plan is cheaper than current shared plan.

Never be afraid of migrating to a new web host. The switch can be made quite faultlessly and with no downtime if done properly. One of the simplest ways a webmaster can shave dollars off of his or her hosting budget is by being able to change web hosting providers easily and effectively. Mr. XYZ had recently hosted site on a shared Windows server for $5.00 per month with unlimited bandwidth. This might sound like a great deal unless one happens to know that this particular hosting company has a propensity to shut sites off that consume surplus bandwidth. When one finds that his site has started to gather more and more hits per day, simply change it over to a new host. In the meantime the money which is saved allows the site to be profitable, and that always makes one feel good.

So we can say that the end result is that cheap web hosting isn’t always bad. Hosting costs could be the only thing that stands in the way of profitability if one’s site isn’t pulling in much revenue. It takes little research into the hosting company one plans on using. Apart from being reliable make sure that it one’s web host has a good reputation to help know this look in the web hosting review sites. Also make sure that it gives enough of what one needs to start with. Keep a very close watch on it, and make sure one have next move planned already when it gets close to migration time.

Finally, never take for granted that, since a plan is priced higher than a competitor is automatically more consistent or robust. Price is by and large the least reliable means of comparison when comparing, aggregating, and reviewing hosting plans. A site will be the revenue producing machine one must visualize this thing and must act accordingly.

Picking a webhost is a lot like picking apples. On the outside, an apple may look delicious, but be rotten inside. Or reversely, a webhost service may look unprofessional on the outside, but be a great webhost on the inside. The key is in user experiences, and I have compiled my own and other’s experiences to help determine which webhosts deliver the best services.

First, we will list the contenders who have made it into my top five: 1&1 Hosting, Yahoo Hosting, iPowerWeb, LunarPages, and DreamHost. In order to make the list, the companies had to be competitively priced, provide 24/7 support, and have atleast a 99% uptime. Any webhosting company that doesn’t have those three things doesn’t deserve a look. That said, this list has been significantly reduced for your convenience, highlighting five companies that I believe deserve a look for different reasons.

Our first webhost review involves 1&1 Hosting, the largest webhost by customers, and for a long time with number of domains as well. The 1&1 hosting price is what is so lucrative: $2.99 a month for webhosting is amazing then to top it off the $2.99 1&1 hosting plan offers 1 free domain name, 5 GB space with 250 GB bandwidth. For budget webhosting, 1&1 hosting is definitely the way to go.

Next up, Yahoo Hosting, a company that was conceived for the Internet is now hosting it. Yahoo has many smart features including one that will install WordPress for you! WordPress it the most famous blogging software, and Yahoo Hosting will setup the process for you. Yahoo Hosting also comes with a free Akismet license, which is an anti-spam filter for your blog. If you host with someone else you’ll have to pay the $5/mo fee! That’s just the tip of the iceberg, my favorite feature is the “site snapshots” which backup the changes to your website every 4 hours. You can restore back to any of the site snapshots easily.

Our third webhost, iPowerWeb, is a large small webhost. By that, we mean they haven’t received quite the large publicity of the other webhosting companies, but are a relatively large in the webhosting industry, and certainly deserving of big-name recognition. iPowerweb offers one of the best domain name deals around. At $2.99 for the first year, domains have never been so inexpensive. iPowerWeb is also very personal with their customers; you will have an account executive assigned to you, who will take care of your every need, just like a good waiter.

LunarPages won my attention in 2001, with the Los Angeles blackout during which they maintained operability. While perhaps server uptime during a national disaster may not be a high priority for you; for many, including myself it’s an insurance policy all into itself. That said, it speaks well for uptime when there isn’t a blackout or disaster. LunarPages also has been one of the first of the support-driven smaller companies to take a price dive, from the industry standard of $7.95 to $6.95 a month.

Then finally there is DreamHost, who while lacking a competitive price makes the list because of their offering VPN service, and Ruby on Rails support. Those two services are a must for many small businesses, and the DreamHost webhosting plans are still a fraction of the normal cost for those webhost services.

Conclusion: For those on a budget 1&1 defeats all. 6-month pay cycles, free domains, and no setup fees at incredible rates, can’t be beat. For VPN, DreamHost delivers a great service. For those looking for great service with powerful hosting: Yahoo, iPowerweb, and LunarPages are the way to go.