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| Choosing web hosting |
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Thursday, September 6, 2007
today. But choosing a hosting company can easily be solved if you know exactly what you want. Other ways that make deciding easier is your budget. If you have a tight budget then you might want to try and limit yourself to a certain amount per month. Usually really good hosting companies can go between $10 per month to about $30 any more than that should be uneccesary. Also if you are marketing on the internet then the best way to choose a host is a company that can give you the tools you need to market online. For example you will need autoresponders, adtracking software, unlimited bandwidth, shopping cart scripts, leads and others. SO choosing a hosting company is solely dependant on your marketing needs, so make sure you know what you want and then begin your search. I would recommend one host if I was asked to and that would be wwkisok Why? Becasue they have all the tools you need. check out the site and see what this web hosting company has on offer. Is a Niche Web Hosting Service for You? Copyright 2006 Stephen Ashton Aside from the big name web hosting providers, there are many smaller, niche-oriented web hosting companies. Could these be a better deal, or provide better service for your highly targeted site than a general web host? First it's important to understand what a niche web host is. Definition of a Niche Web Host A niche web hosting service is targeted to a very small and distinct group of customers (called a niche). Services are modeled around the basic needs of members of that target customer group, and niche web hosts can range from offering hosting services only for certain types of web hosting, or for a certain type of site. Types of Web Hosting • Email Hosting – These are targeting businesses who want their email saved to a different server than their web site, so if the site goes down, they can still access email. • Image Hosting – Image hosting has become more popular over the last few years. It is targeted towards individuals who simply want space to host and display image files without the need for a full web site, or as a supplement for a full web site. • Reseller Hosting – Only reseller accounts are sold. You can't buy web hosting from them for your own personal use. • Audio / Podcast hosting – Audio hosting sites are nothing new, but they've usually been targeted towards musicians, allowing them to display their work, and oftentimes giving them a one- or even multi-page site to include images and information about themselves as well. Now, with podcasting becoming more popular, some sites allow you to upload your podcasts and make them available for public download. • Genre Sites – These are hosting companies that target their services to certain types of web site owners, such as musicians, artists, photographers, web designers, authors, etc. They provide tools, and sometimes web site templates, that are specifically designed to be of use to their target market. The Cost of Niche Web Hosting While you may think many niche web hosts would provide their services at discounted rates, since they're often offering fewer services (such as just image or email hosting), that's not necessarily the case. While you may only pay $2 – 3 for email or image hosting monthly, you can now find some of the larger, full-service, web hosting companies offering their services for those rates. Due to the fact that niche web hosts are targeting smaller customer groups, they actually tend to charge more than their general web host competitors. This is because they don't have the luxury of selling space in bulk to huge groups of general customers. They also sometimes charge increased fees, because they provide specialty tools or templates for their target customers that the general hosts to not. Is it for You? While a general web host can provide most, if not all, of the services you need, it's more a matter of preference than anything else. The exception would be if you find a niche web host that is providing specialty tools that you'd like to use in your site or other hosted services. Niche hosting for limited services, such as email or images, can be a good value. That's especially true if your current general web host limits the number of email accounts you can set up or the space available for images. Consider the benefits a niche host will provide in relation to the cost that you would be charged. If they offer something special that you consider worth the price, then niche hosting might just be for you. ------ Learn more domain name tips at http://www.domainnamescenter.com and find cheap web hosting at http://www.abetterwebhost.com How To Avoid Problems With Web Hosting Companies The best way to determine the quality of a hosting company is to use their services. Some of these companies will cause many headaches for you, and you want to avoid this at all costs. In this article I will describe certain problems you could have with a hosting service, and how to avoid it. Because your websites rely on hosting services to keep them running, what they do can effect you, whether it is for the good or bad. One of the most common problems people run into when dealing with hosting companies are server downtimes. When the server goes down, this is a big inconvenience to everyone who uses the service. What really makes it bad is when it takes days to get a response from the tech support department. Some companies don't even answer their emails. Hosting companies which do this have bad customer service, and should be avoided. You should also let others know about their service so that they can avoid it. Another problem which webmasters will run into is hosting companies which like to hold their domain hostage. When you build a website, and decide you want to sell it, you may find out that the hosting company will not allow you to. They will make up some excuse for why they don't allow it, but basically they want control over your domain. This is a big headache, and to avoid this problem you should always ask if you can transfer your website to other servers if you decide to sell it. If they tell you this can't be done, look for another service. I've talked to many webmasters about this, and most will not buy a website if they can't transfer it over to their own server. If you plan on selling your website, it is critical that you use a web hosting service which will allow you to easily transfer over your domain without any problems. Even if a hosting company offers excellent service, if their servers are constantly down, you will have problems. When you ask them about this, they will almost always tell you that they have a 99.9% uptime. My advice is to not take their word for it. Sign up for webmaster forums and ask questions. Get more than one answer, because many webmasters own hosting companies and will refer you to their services to make money. While nothing is wrong with this, you will want to make sure you get a bunch of opinions about a particular company before using it. Michael Colucci is a technical writer for $2.99 Hosting - Complete web hosting services at only $2.99 per month. |
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