Step by Step procedure to select the Best Web Host for you

Welcome, since you are here so this means that you have decided that you want to have your own web host. There are more than 5000 Web Host providers there in the world hosting 200 million sites (Paid/Free). Before Choosing your host let's Write down your requirements. Are you going for a Paid server or Free hosting ? If you want to build a professional business site than it is highly recommended that YOU SHOULD choose paid server. They are very cheap and this site is all about them. If you just want a personal site than you can choose either a paid or free server. So which one do you want ? In this page we will write about Paid Hosting, you are also encouraged to visit Free Web Hosting. page to get more options. Commercial Web Hosts now you have to write down the details of your requirements. I am assuming that we are targeting 10,000 visitors every month, which is a average number, if you think that this is too much than still you should keep in mind that we are thinking for the long term. how much do you want to pay( monthly fees to the service provider) ? Well it is better if you DO NOT COMPROMISE ON THE PRICE of web hosting. Don't worry, there is so much competition that price of web hosting has touched rock bottom and almost everyone charges the same. Anyway you will never have to give more than $30/month for a average 10,000 visitor/month site. So let's come to the MORE important factors. Web Host should be reliable and Fast Many people don't' consider this option but I think this is very crucial aspect of web hosting. Make sure that it is functional all the time. It should be up round the clock. On an average you want the host which remains up 99+% time up. Make sure to ask this via email from the host provider which you are interested in. How much disk space you want ? It depends on what do you want to host. If you are providing lot's of download's from your server than you need lot's of space otherwise 500 MB space will be alright. Remember that your mail account space will also come into this space and you want to keep at least 100 MB space for your mail account's. I have seen people managing in less than 25 MB space as they hardly keeps too many images on there sites and have less than 20 HTML pages. If this is your case, than you can take 25/50 MB space. It is always better to take more space than you need as you will always be expanding in future. How much bandwidth you want ? BANDWIDTH is the amount of data transfer when a visitor visits your site. Say some person visits 4 pages of my site (total size 345 KB) than he used 345 KB. Now let's calculate how much Bandwidth you need. 10,000 Visitors X 1 MB per visitor = 10 GB of Bandwidth per month. again this is alot more than what you will probably need. If you are tight on budget than feel free to make it 5 GB or even less but remember if on 25th of the month your site crosses this limit than your website won't be accessible for the remaining days of the month. It is important to monitor your site Bandwidth. What kind of scripting and database you are looking for in your web host? Again, If you are really looking for more than a simple HTML site than you should make sure that the web host should provide FTP, PHP, Perl CGI-BIN access, SSI, .htaccess, telnet, SSH crontabs to you. This are fairly basic things. FTP helps you in transferring files, where as PERL/PHP will help you to provide interaction to the user. SSL is for security purpose, cron is for scheduling jobs, htaccess is for customizing errors. You can know more about them in articles. How Many POP email account you want ? you definitely need few email acounts like contact@yourdomain.com and admin@yourdomain.com other than your personal id's. Make sure to get all the details about email account like how many accounts you are allowed to have, do the allow forwarding emails and whether you can access them from Outlook/Thunderbird. Technical Support After making a probable list of the hosts, feel free to ask all your queries. This will make you clearify things better and also allows you to know how fast and reliable is there technical support. If the are taking too much time in replying than may be you want to try some other provider afterall you dont' want to wait for 4 days for there reply when your site or database gets crashed !!! Other than these you also SHOULD look for :- Subdomains You may want to create subdomains like usa.yourdomain.com so make sure that the host provides you this. NOrmally all of them do provide this option but still why take a risk. which Server ? if you are looking to run ASP scripts than you have to go for servers running WIndows otherwise it is always better to choose cheaper, more stable and feature-laden Unix systems running the Apache server. I am hosting this site on BSD, another variant of Linux OS. IT is highly advisable to choose these Unix servers as they also provide high level of customizability. Plans ? Web hosts provide various PAYING plans like monthly/quarterly/annually and normaly annually looks cheaper than monthly (total for 12 months) but it is advisable to choose monthly for a new web host. Let's test it first and than you can always upgrade your plan to yearly afterwards. Again make sure to ask them and clarify all your queries. Don't make your own assumptions or get satisfied early. Also some sites charge Setup fees. Make sure to verify this. What is the reputation of host provider (to me this is very important) ? IT is highly advisable that you should do a good research on the reputation of your web host. What others think about your host. It is better to not blindly follow what the reviews that web hosts write on there sites. Mostly they are fake. Try to get independent reivews or ask people personally like your friends. You can also check on forums as you will get independent and more correct reviews there. And of course allwebhosts is all about them only. FINAL WORDS. So you must have got a good view of what you want and what you can get. Now you can start your search for the best web hosts for your needs. on allwebhosts we had provide you a huge list of web hosts which are hugely popular to the hosts which are really cheap to the hosts which we think that are offering best offers. Make sure to find the best one for you and Don't forget to get all the details about them before selecting anyone. BEST OF LUCK !!!