The Best Web Hosting

Are you looking to establish a presence on the Internet? What type of site do you have in mind a commercial or personal web site? Among the common reasons why people build Web sites are to sell a product or service directly online, provide information or tools, define a company’s mission, promote community development by bringing groups of people together and to share artwork, writing or photographs.

The best Web hosting service will be the one that can meet the needs of the site that you are trying to create. Be sure to research your hosting provider.

Look for a company with system administrators who are trained professionals that can handle all the technical aspects of the business and offer 24 hour toll free customer support. Find one that
has multiple connections to the Internet ensuring a back up plan for traffic to be re-routed through another connection if the main server goes down.

The best Web hosting provider will offer several plans that allow you to upgrade your service as the business grows (ability to add additional bandwidth, server-side scripting, database support
and multimedia streaming).

Network connectivity speed is another important factor. Visitors are sometimes in a rush and you don’t want to loose them because your web page does not load fast enough so be sure that they guarantee a quick, reliable connection.

If you’re a technical genius you may want a provider that offers dedicated hosting a feature that allows a web site to have its own server granting web masters total control over the back end of
the server.

Those planning to resell Web space would want to search for a company that offers unlimited sub domains (domains within a domain) which are individual Web addresses built upon a pre-existing domain.

example: if your domain name is abc.com and a company called Sales Force wants Web space but does not want their own domain name you would be able to give them their own personal site and the address could be salesforce.abc.com

Best Web Hosting Features:

• CGI (Common Gateway Interface) - small scripts that process data taken from the user (such as from a form application)



• Flash - a popular animation software by Macromedia that requires little bandwidth (making it user friendly to individuals with low or high-speed connections)



• FrontPage - a popular site design and management tool developed by Microsoft



• FTP (File Transfer Protocol) - allows remote users and Web servers to exchange files



• MIME (Multipurpose Internet Email Extensions) - allows users to transfer non-text messages like audio, video and images through e-mail



• Shopping cart - designed to handle the e-commerce section of a Web site enabling users to browse for and purchase products online



• SQL (Standard Query Language) - a standard protocol used to request information from databases



• Firewall - a piece of security software designed to protect Web servers. They are typically used to protect sites from hacker attacks/unauthorized access

Best Web Hosting Comparison


Infinology

• Windows & Unix web hosting
• $6.95 with free setup
• PHP
• ASP
• Coldfusion MX
• MySQL
• Shopping Cart is included with basic web hosting plan


LunarPages

• UNIX web hosting
• 5000 MB Space
• 400 GB Traffic
• $7.95 per month with free setup
• Toll Free Support
• ASP & JSP supported for $1 extra and $2 extra per month
respectively


MidPhase


• UNIX web hosting
• 3000 MB Space
• 500 POP3 E-mails
• 50 GB Traffic
• SSL
• Stats
• FTP
• Free domain
• $7.95 per month
• Free setup fee with annual purchase


IPowerWeb

• UNIX web hosting
• 2000 MB Space
• 50 GB Traffic
• SSL
• Stats
• FTP
• Free domain
• $7.95 per month
• free setup with annual purchase


Jumpline

• UNIX based web hosting
• plans allowing you to host 6 websites
• $14.95 per month
• Quality tech support





Source: Web Hosting Industry Review (WHIR), web-hosting-reviews.org