Finding an Affordable Hosting Service

By Scott Bannon

If you have developed a web site for your new business you will need to pick an affordable hosting provider. This gives you somewhere on the Internet to place your files so that traffic can browse in.

Having a hosting account is just buying virtual space on the web which will serve your site. Your domain name is simply the address of that virtual property.

Several key things you'll want to look for in selecting a hosting provider are the totals of disk space and bandwidth which the account offers.

You'll want enough disk space for your site, as well as lots of extra space for email and media storage.

Bandwidth is normally set at a rate of 10 times the amount of disk space you get.

You will also need to plan in advance what add-on sorts of scripts you'll be using for features like forums pages or a shopping cart to sell your products from.

Lastly you will want to learn about the host's reputation based on the opinions of their existing customers.

This is typically simple to find by browsing their customer forum boards. Most web hosts keep a forum for clients to communicate and they are normally accessible by guests for posting pre-sales requests about the service.

Learn what current users of the host are saying about it to give yourself a candid impression.

The only other major thing to weigh is the pricing of the provider. You don't necessarily want the most or least costly service, in-fact you may probably be searching for a cost that is close to average among the hosts you have reviewed.

The reason here is pretty simple, if their pricing is too high then they are probably gouging people. If it's too low they're likely shaving on hardware which can lead to slow performance.

Look for all the features you need or want and stay within the averages on pricing. Affordable hosting isn't the same as cheap hosting, it's quality service that's within your budget.

Scott Bannon earned his first online revenue in 1995 and has made a full time living online since 2000. Get valuable advice and tips from Scott's free blog for webmasters, O'Bannon's Leap, where he chronicles the ongoing leap of becoming a webpreneur. Scott also participates at Build The Dot Com, a free resource for webmasters, by webmasters.