These days affordable web hosting is easy to obtain. There are offers for web hosting as low as $3.99/month. Just remember, like anything else you get what you pay for, so please think carefully.
If you plan for your present needs with future growth in mind, you will have more confidence in your decisions. The following is an overview of common web hosting features:
Disk Space
This is the amount of space you have for your website and accompanying features like pictures and text. The more you want on your website, the more disk space you will need.
If you plan on building a large e-commerce site, you’ll need disk space to store photos, product descriptions, and other store features including merchant gateway information.
Data Transfer
Data transfer space is also known as bandwidth. This refers to the amount of data exchanged over a connection (from your hosted website to someone who is accessing it through the internet). Like disk space, you’ll need a greater data transfer allocation for larger sites with more high-bandwidth features (like video, audio, pictures, etc.).
Estimating data transfer needs is done by by figuring out the size of the different web pages on your site, and calculating the amount of traffic you expect to visit these pages in a month. The page size multiplied by the page traffic (i.e., number of times the pages are loaded and the data is transferred) will give you the number.
If you find out that you require more space than you thought, consult with your web hosting service about an upgrade.
Languages
This is relevant mostly for people who plan to do significant programming on the site. If you have a programmer who prefers a particular language,make sure your host supports it. This is a slightly more technical feature, so if you’re not familiar with what languages you might need, confer with the hosting service’s tech support or your own technical team.
Logs & Statistics
Tools for logging traffic and activity on your site are very important. You need to know how visitors arrived on your site, what they are searching for and doing on your site, and how long they stay. When you understand user behavior, you can make better decisions about how to design and organize your site. And it’s a lot of fun to see who is visiting and how they got to your page!
Mailboxes
Most web site builders, even those with large businesses doing online e-commerce, will not need the thousands of email addresses advertised in some web hosting plans. Unless you have some significant email needs, don’t make this a top priority. But you do want a professional email address, such as “admin@DomainName.com”, not JoeSmith@gmail.com, or any of the free email hosts. Not professional.
