Discover what you need to be hosted for secure and reliable hosting, UNIX, NT, Dedicated Servers, Shared Servers and more.

Selecting the best web host provider is tantamount to finding a new home for your business. Just like you would not rent or buy an office space with electrical problems or a leaky roof, a good web host provider should maintain a stable and secure environment, as well. The easiest way to shop around for a hosting provider is to learn what to look for in a web hosting a company.

Selecting a Web hosting Solution

Highly Responsive customer support. In the virtual world circumstances out of your control occur. If there is a problem with your website, 24/7 tech support is imperative. The best website hosting provider mans the phones every moment of the day or night.

Instantaneous connection to the Internet. A web hosting company should have multiple a minimum T1 lines. In fact T3 or OC3 lines are the best.

24/7 FTP Capabilities 3. Your webmaster or you should be able to access your web site to upload new information to your FTP anytime of day.

Plenty of POPs. Certain cheap web hosting companies provide only a few POP e-mail accounts and auto responders. In general, it's well worth the upgrade to a mid-level package to attain the features.

99.5% Reliability and Uptime. Make sure that the web hosting company you choose runs daily back-ups and storage updates.

Web Hosting Statistics and Server Logs 6. Analyzing the traffic of your website is an important way to gage the activity of the site. As a result, server traffic logs are a critical tools for calculating your customers are and the type of information they are seeking.

Web Hosting Growth Potential. Your host should be able to meet your needs as you grow. This means you should have access to your own CGI-bin, multiple domain availability, and support for scripting languages such ASP, PHP, and PERL.

Review the Web Hosting Environment
Websites are housed in a host computer. Overall, the web hosting environment that exists within that computer can be broken down into two categories:

Shared Server
In simple terms, a shared server or virtual server means that a web site is hosted on one machine with several other sites. The webmaster can use their server software to configure or manipulate the site in various ways. The cost of hosting your website with a shared server varies from $8 - $250 per month – depending on the add-ons and the web hosting company.

Dedicated Server
A machine that only one website uses is referred to as a dedicated server. Dedicated hosting is when you rent an entire web server from a web host. The advantages of hosting via a dedicated servers is the large volume of storage space to meet your web site’s growth needs. Moreover, a high level of security, server management and technical support are the other benefits of dedicated hosting. Dedicated servers are optimal because they offer the most flexibility for sites with large bandwidth requirements. The price of hosting sites from a dedicated server starts at $140 and upward.

Determine whether NT or UNIX web hosting platform, is the best way to host your site.

• Review top 5 web host providers on the Internet.