Support - you should check whether the specific host really has fast and competent support service. All of the hosting companies claim to have excellent 24/7 support but only few really do. In order to find out what kind of support service the host has, you might first try their support options for yourself: call them, try live chat or send an email. Also hear what other customers are saying about their experience with the particular host's support. Fast and competent support is extremly important if you want to have your web site problems and missions solved.
Traffic volume - A small or medium web site will consume between 1GB and 5GB of data transfer per month. You can calculate this by multiplying your average page size with the number of expected page views per month. If your average page size is 30KB and you expect 50,000 page views per month, you will need 0.03MB x 50,000 = 1.5GB. Larger, commercial sites often consume more than 100GB of monthly traffic.web hosting companies have various restrictions regarding traffic your web site has. The most important is to find out how much you'll have to pay if your web site's traffic exceeds the specific limit of your hosting plan. This way you'll avoid paying large sums of money if your site suddenly becomes popular.
Bandwidth - The amount of data that can be transmitted in a fixed amount of time. Web hosting providers usually set the limits on monthly basis. Publishing pictures or broadcastind video or sound requires more bandwidth. You'd want to know approximately how much bandwidth you'll need. more on bandwidth
How Much Disk Space - A small or medium web site will need between 10 and 100MB of disk space.If you look at the size of HTML pages, you will see that the average size is very small. But if you look at the size of the images (button, gif, banner, jpg) used inside the pages, you will often find images many times larger than the page itself. Expect each HTML page to take up between 5 and 50KB of disk space on your web server, depending on the use of images or other space consuming elements. If you plan to use lots of images or graphic elements (not to mention sound files or movies), you might be needing much more disk space.
Daily Backup - Make sure your service provider runs a secure daily backup routine, otherwise you may lose some valuable data.
Content Restrictions - You need to know if there are some restrictions for particular content such as adult, gambling and others. Is broadcasting video or sound available etc..
Email Capabilities - You certainly need email boxes, autoresponders and other email features when running a site. Make sure email capabilities you need are available and also check with other customers of the specific company whether email features are running smoothly. This is important because lots of reports of email not working with various companies have been filed recently.
Front Page Extensions -
If you plan to use FrontPage to develop your site make sure your provider fully supports FrontPage server extensions
Specific Application - If you intend to use some specific application such as ASP, PHP, ColdFusion and others make sure your host supports it's use.
Upgrade charges: Does the company charge setup fees for upgrades?
Best value for your money: Compare prices on 3 to 4 services to make
sure you are getting the best value for your money. All this one has to bear in mind when deciding on the right hosting company but remember the most important thing is reliability and competence of the web hosting company. Find the company with such qualities and the chances are that all other issues will be easily solved. We recommend providers listed on HostingLair's main page.
