WEB HOSTING BASICS - DECIDING ON A WEB HOSTING PLAN

Getting Started
Deciding on a Web Hosting Plan
Controlling Costs

What are the typical features offered by web hosting providers?

Although web hosting services come in shapes and sizes (read more about Levels Of Service), there are certain characteristics that are present in almost all of them.

All web sites occupy a certain amount of disk space, consume some bandwidth and may allow the owner to send and receive email (for the sake of accuracy it should be noted that your email hosting can be handled separately from your web site).

As far as site access tools are concerned, you may be given access to the site via FTP, secure shell (SSH), via a control panel, or a combination of those.

If you expect to develop server-side functionality, you may need certain packages such as PHP, Perl or Java servlet, as well as one of the several standard database interfaces.

Besides choosing plan features, the question that most users will have to resolve right from the start is which platform to host on. The two most popular ones are Linux and Windows. Other options include Mac OS X (Server edition), Sun Solaris and Free BSD.

Read more about choosing features in our Buyer's Guide.

How much bandwidth (/monthly transfers) should I plan for?

Clearly, it depends on your site or rather, on its popularity. The more content is downloaded by your visitors, the more bandwidth you will consume. If you pay for total monthly transfers (which is typical for shared plans and most simple sites), you can . If you pay for bandwidth rathern than total transfers (which is typical for larger sites, dedicated hosting and colocation), we have a bandwidth estimation calculator designed to help you estimate your bandwidth requirements.