With more and more people and businesses venturing online, the demand for web hosting has also increased. This has led to in influx of new players offering web hosting at various prices and with various services, each trying to get a piece of the market. However, this makes it that much more difficult when trying to choose a quality web host for your personal or business needs.
Depending on your needs, you might want to consider a cheap hosting account for starters. You can get a low cost hosting service for around $5 - $10 per month and that will allow you to at least get up and running. From there, you can decide if that service meets your needs or if you need to upgrade to a more feature-rich plan.
If you plan on hosting multiple sites, a reseller account is definitely in order. With a reseller account, you can generally set up as many domains as you want as long as you stay within the disk space and bandwidth limits for your particular plan. This can give you the ability to host hundreds, if not thousands of sites on a single account for around $25 - $30 per month.
For added security and stability, you can choose to purchase a Virtual Private Server or dedicated hosting account. That will cost somewhere around $100 per month or more. In addition, it may or may not be managed which means that you might have to take care of the routine maintenance on the server if that service is not part of your plan.
Whichever option you choose, you should also be aware of some other key features to look for. First, you'll need to decide which operating system - either Windows or Unix/Linux typically. The choice you make will depend on what type of scripts or other software you might want to run on the server.
It's probably a good idea to use a control panel to manage your site, so you will have to make sure your hosting provider offers this as part of the plan. Cpanel and Plesk are two of the more popular ones. This decision may also be impacted by the specific software you intend to use on your site.
Support is also an important feature. Be sure your hosting company has 24x7 email support at the very least. Preferably, in addition to that, they will have online chat and phone support also.
Article written by Kevin Nelson. Get the most out of your webhost while keeping more cash in your pocket. Research top solutions for cheap web hosting, ecommerce web hosting and more in the resources section at OnlineWebHostGuide.com.