An experienced webmasters can easily setup a new website in few minutes with one of their preferred hosting companies but the newcomers are often confused by the plans of various web hosts e.g. – affordable web hosting, Cheap Web hosting, ASP Web Hosting, Budget Hosting, Dedicated Servers, Ecommerce Hosting, FrontPage Web Hosting, Hosting With Templates, Managed Web Hosting, PHP Web Hosting, Reseller Hosting, Shared Hosting, Unix / Linux Hosting, Virtual Private Servers, Windows Hosting and Co-location Hosting etc.
All web hosting plans and terminologies are classified in terms of cost, programming languages, operation systems, Web servers and functionality which are generally few things/ points to look at while choosing a web hosting plan whether we run a hobby site, a small business site, or a high-traffic Ecommerce site.
Points of consideration are as follows: –
1-Cost – Cost of web hosting is the first and important thing, which is looked by all small site owners. Most of web hosting plans are costing less than $10 per month while Affordable web hosting, budget hosting or cheap web hosting plan are often cost less than $5 per month.
2-Programming Languages – We have to choose the hosting plans that support the programming languages of our choice whether we want to write in our own scripts or install customized software packages of our choice. PHP, ASP, JSP and PERL are the most commonly used Web development languages. PHP Web hosting, ASP Web hosting, JSP Web hosting or PERL Web hosting are the plans, which are referred as support to our chosen programming language. Few companies support ASP or JSP but almost all hosting companies give support to PHP/ My SQL. PHP/My SQL is the best choice as programming language for the beginners of website hosting.
3-Operating Systems – Once we pick the programming language(s) for our Web development, now its turn to choose the operating system that will hosts our Websites and we are free to choose it. ASP only works with Microsoft Windows while other programming languages, PHP, JSP and PERL, work on Windows, UNIX and Linux as well. Hosting plans supporting particular operating systems are known as Window Hosting, Unix Hosting or Linux hosting.
4-Servers – In Web hosting industry, Apache is the most widely supported Web server. Apache server has the ability of mode rewrite to make dynamic URL, look like static URL or SEO-friendly among other things. On Microsoft Internet Information Server or IIS server only ASP works while Web logic or Web sphere is needed for JSP hosting.
5-Performance – Managed Web Hosting, Shared Hosting, Dedicated Servers, or Virtual Private Servers (VPS) are the servers on which many webmasters are interested.
{A} Shared hosting is the cheapest plan, and we can host as many sites as we want to have with a Reseller Hosting option.
{B} Virtual Private Servers (VPS) costs around $50 a month, and
{C} Dedicated Server plan will cost from $50 – $100 or more per month depending on storage space and bandwidth of the hosting plan.
For most of websites a shared hosting is good enough but if our website serves heavy audio/video files, or needs to frequently install customized software packages, we have to go with a dedicated server, e.g. a company which was selling Computer Based Training (CBT) software online had upgraded its hosting plan from a shared hosting to a dedicated hosting plan in the first 6 months of online operation because now the company has started to use video/audio support to boost its online sales.
6-Online Transaction Support – Support of secure connection (HTTPS) and digital certification to conduct online transaction safely is required for the websites that accepts online payment. Use of a third party payment processor for payment process is the alternative of having our own online merchant account and combination of pay pal shopping cart will takes only few minutes and don’t require any knowledge of programming skills.
After all, choose a web-hosting plan that works for not complex one and us, as we are the beginners or professionals.
