How to Choose Web Hosting Plan that Fits Your Need

Ready to run your own web site? Then what you need is a reliable web hosting plan. It mean you must carefullly choose web hosting company that capable to provide powerful server hardwares, near 100% uptime guarantee (permanent - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week - high speed internet connection), ultimate softwares, skillful IT staff, additional services, common sense monthly fee, and hassle free money back guarantee in case something unexpected happens.

Before we go more deeply into web hosting plan main topic, let's take a glance at each type of hosting services:

Shared hosting

Shared hosting means your web site is hosted on a server along with many other web sites, ranging from a few to hundreds or thousands sites. Usually all domains on the same server share the same resources, such as server CPU and RAM. It is just like you live in an apartment building with hundreds other people.

Shared hosting is popular and a good solution for small business and sites with low to medium traffic, because it bring low cost hosting solution with extensive features and technical support.

However, once your site become popular and reach solid high traffic, you need more powerful hosting solution. It’s time to move to dedicated hosting.

Dedicated hosting

With dedicated hosting your web site is hosted on a dedicated server, and you gains full control over the server as root (Linux server) or administrator (Windows server). It is a powerful and more secure solution for large web sites with high traffic and special softwares.

Using dedicated server doesn't mean you own the server. It just mean you rent a server owned by hosting company for a time period to host your own web site, not shared with many other web sites as in shared hosting.

However, if you REALLY prepare for internet battle and want to host your web sites on your own server(s), it strongly suggested to choose colocation hosting solution.

Colocation hosting

Collocation hosting solution lets you host your web sites on your own web server that is placed on the locations of a hosting company’s data center. Colocation is basically as same as running your own server in your home or office, only that the server is located at a special physical place better designed for data storing with ultimate maintenance, electrical power, high-security against fire and vandalism, regulated backup power, storage facilities, dedicated high speed internet connections, and many more.

As part of its exclusive service, the colocation hosting client are permitted, and usually have his own administrator to visit the data center on site to do any hardware upgrades or changes. No wonder colocation hosting is the most powerful and expensive type of web hosting service.

What you REALLY need from a web hosting plan?

The answer is depend on what kind of website you'll run on it. Will it just a personal blog? or Ecommerce web site? Online Forum? Wiki farms? or even a social network site?

If you are non-technical person who just want to host your personal blog or wedding site, a good web hosting service may offer basic web hosting plan with standard but easy to use features. The features including - but not limited to - one-click software installer (instant tool to create web site with platform like Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, etc), instant backup, FTP account, free site builder tool, and/or free web site layout templates available to choose.

The web hosting plan also should have email capabilities, including unlimited POP3 accounts with SMTP, WebMail Access, auto responders, mail forwards, mailing lists, email aliases, spam blocker, and IMAP support.

More complex web sites need comprehensive package that provides application development platforms (CGI, fastCGI, Java, PHP, Ruby on Rails, ColdFusion, Perl, Python, SSI, and ASP.NET), and powerful database support (SQL). It also need system management including SSH Access and Cron Job Scheduling. Application development facilities allow the customers to write or install in-house or third-party scripts for applications like forums and content management.

For e-commerce web site hosting, along with application development platforms and database support, a private SSL support is highly recommended. Your web hosting plan also should have support to any popular ecommerce management system like ZenCart, Interchange Shopping Cart, Magento, osCommerce, or Cube Cart.

If needed, you may upgrade your basic web hosting plan to higher level at any time, and a good hosting provider should give you less complex mechanism to do this.

An advanced web hosting plan (some call it professional or business hosting plan) provide more capabilities, including unlimited domain names, free dedicated IP, free private SSL, anonymous FTP, addon/parked domains, VPN access, toll-free phone, and more.

Disk space and bandwidth restriction

Many major web hosting companies like HostGator or Dreamhost give you unlimited disk storage and monthly bandwidth even for basic hosting plan. However, an unlimited storage and bandwidth may be a bit lavish - and ridiculous - if your blog only have 5 articles published and 20 visitors a month .. :)

Storage and bandwidth restriction most likely a special issue for high traffic forums, "Digg-like" social bookmarking sites, social network, image/video sharing, and other type of multimedia sites.

If you plan to broadcast video or sound or publish images, choose web hosting plan that offer unlimited storage and bandwidth. Also make sure you don't have to pay a fortune for unexpected high traffic, for example when someone put your URL on Digg, which give your web site instant popularity overnight.