Everyday, more people are discovering the benefits and global reach of the Internet. As a result, more online businesses are being established and more websites are going up. Now is the right time to stake your claim in Cyberspace and the best way to do it is with your very own website. Because web hosting is what you need to get a piece of the action, I will help you find a good service in five easy steps.

1.) Determine Your Needs

The first step in finding a web host is determining your individuals needs. Why do you even need a website? Is it just to share photos and info with family and friends? Are you moving your business online? Do you plan to sell products or services? The answers to these questions are very important as they will ultimately determine what type of web hosting you need.

2.) Features

After getting a good idea of what your website needs, it’s time to consider the feature-set that will meet those requirements. Of course, features will vary greatly depending on individual needs but here are a few to keep in mind.

- Disk space and bandwidth

Disk space refers to the amount of space you have on the server for storing your website files. Bandwidth entails how much traffic and activity your site can support. If you don’t have enough of either, your site will be limited and can actually become slow or inaccessible. The good thing is that most web hosts supply more than enough as the average website requires less than 1 gigabyte of each resource per month.

- E-commerce tools

If your goals consist of selling products or services, selecting a web hosting plan with Ecommerce features is a must. Keep your eyes peeled for multiple email accounts, free shopping cart software and SSL encryption to protect your online transactions.

- Control panel

The control panel is one of the most essential web hosting features. This software allows you to control virtually every aspect of your account. From the interface you can access the design tool that allows you to build your site, create email accounts, upload files and much more.

3.) Reliability

Your website won’t be very popular if it’s always down because of technical difficulties. In order to avoid these issues, I suggest searching long and hard for a host that delivers a reliable service. There are many aspects that point to reliability but the most critical is uptime. Uptime refers to the amount of time your site will be available opposed to being down for a wide range of reasons. As of now, 99.9% is the industry standard so anything less should be viewed as unacceptable.

4.) Technical Support and Customer Service

When it comes to web hosting, one should never underestimate the importance of support. Anything can go wrong behind the scenes and when it does, you need to know what’s going on. I recommend looking for a company that offers various means of support including toll-free phone, email and live chat. Support is something that can make or break a web host and also determine how successful you will be online.

5.) Customer Feedback

One can learn a lot about a particular web hosting service from customer feedback. You can find web hosting reviews all over the web, and trust me, they are absolutely golden. A quality review you will tell you what to expect in terms of price, features, reliability and support. Most importantly, it will let you know what service is worth looking into and who should be avoided at all costs.

Looking at the cost involved ranging from $150 – $1000 per month why is that dedicated web hosting such a huge punch on the business web hosting market? Is paid web hosting worth it?

Now what is dedicated web hosting? Dedicated web hosting is having one single server rented to a single customer by the webhosting provider. Virtual dedicated servers and co-location web hosting are two similar solutions relatively familiar in the web hosting industry. In virtual dedicated server hosting plans one does not get an entire computer just for oneself this means that the virtual server shares the resources of a web server computer with other customers of the web hosting provider. There are many similarities between both Co-locating web hosting and virtual dedicated servers but the main difference is that, in co-locating web hosting the customer owns the web server computer and web-hosting provider only houses the web server computer and sells bandwidth to the customer whereas in dedicated web hosting the web server computer belongs to the web-hosting provider and is only rented by the customer.

When single web server is rented to a single customer it is called real dedicated web hosting.

For businesses that work with high traffic, dedicated web hosting is the idyllic way out. Application required for its operation and functionalities of web site falls under ones specific control.

There are many advantages of dedicated webhosting:

• Concerns regarding the maintenance, the security, and the reliability of ones web server are all handled by hosting provider.

• One doesn’t have to bother about maintaining the hardware and the connectivity of the computer as it is on rent and not been purchased

• One is freed from replacing the component or solving the problem, as everything is provider’s responsibility

• One gets compensations as part of the Service Level Agreement (SLA) by most o f the web hosting providers.

• In the occurrence of failure one may get reimbursement with the cost of ones hosting plan for a month or a fraction of it, depending upon the severity of the failure.

• When compared to having to pay for the component and for the technical support required for actually replacing the component, while web site in not online all these advantages seems quiet good as at the day end one will just be paying for functional hardware.

Imagine the business with all the resources being saved on the above maintenance issues. One can choose between “managed” or “unmanaged” service levels as the costs of administering and maintaining the web server one has taken on rent will vary depending upon the web hosting provider.

One can choose “managed” dedicated hosting which means one will have access to “control panel” if one is uncomfortable with the technical expertise required by the management of a web server computer. All the essential tasks required to be performed by the proper functioning of ones web server via a simply point-and-click user-friendly interface are allowed by control panel.

This way one can setup, administer and maintain all the web sites on web server without knowing or typing any command lines nor having any in depth knowledge of the operating system.

Those with great degree of technical expertise in mastering a root access to the server can go for “unmanaged” option. “Unmanaged” option offers complete server administration, thus having possibility of configuring every service on the web server. But if necessary services are not configured properly it may result in failure of system. Due to these reasons unmanaged dedicated hosting is recommended for only people having solid server administration background or for web developers who require custom applications for their web sites, or a customized environment. Thus people having dedicated server computer’s stability will not be prone to the plagues affecting shared web hosting solutions.

Imagine-

-errors in programming usually made by the beginners,

- Or overload i.e. server being crowded with applications and components required by the other customers

- Or in a shared web server when the processor time and the installed memory are both shared by the software applications needed by the other users.

Instant support is provided to its customers when required by the dedicated web hosting whether managed or unmanaged which is not possible on a shared hosting plans where one will be facing delays and possible additional technical support fees.

If one is having prompt support service from ones side then the customers will be happy and at the same time there will be growth in business. For those doing business in web designing advantage to have his own dedicated server is priceless not because he will be able to offer pure hosting services, but because he will able to offer them packaged with the web design activity also. When one is having access to web server for 24 hours, then within minutes one can modify a website for a customer or upload a new one.

If complete web presence solution, design and hosting, is offered by the studio to a customer there is chance of that customer being regular this is an added advantage.

The benefits of a good dedicated web hosting are:-

• Businesses solutions being translated into sales growth

• Better customer relationship results to improved company image

• Reduced cost compared with in-house web hosting solution, and so on.

• One can run a better business and better business gives good profit.