Hosting Account

A hosting account allows access to a hosting server where the files that make up your Web site are stored. Hosting accounts are paid for on a monthly basis and can range in price from $6-30 USD depending on how much storage space is needed, how much traffic is allowed, and other considerations. The primary consideration when choosing a hosting company is their customer service/technical support.

What to look for when choosing a hosting company

Customer service - Look to see if they have a phone number you can call to reach a person. Some hosting companies require you to communicate through email only, which can make asking questions, requesting information, and reporting problems a headache.

Server redundancy – Every hosting company should have backup servers in case a server goes down so you will never have an interruption in service.

The number of accounts stored on a single server – When there are too many Web sites on one server, access to those Web sites can become very slow. Many hosting companies who charge very low monthly rates are able to do so because they overfill their servers with Web site hosting accounts in lieu of purchasing more servers.

Disk space – Although the size of Web sites is increasing with faster Internet speeds, Web sites are designed to be as small as possible to minimize download time. Usually, 20-30 MB (MegaBytes) on a server should be plenty of space for your Web site.

Data transfer – The amount of information that can be downloaded from your Web site in one month. For example, if your Web site is 100k in file size and 10 users visit the site and download the entire 100k (every page, image, PDF, etc., on the entire Web site), then they have downloaded 1 MB collectively. Data transfer is usually measured in the Gigabytes or GB.

1,000k = 1 MB

1,000 MB = 1 GB

A small fee is charged if the data transfer limit is exceeded. Some hosting companies offer expensive accounts with no data transfer limits.

Management software – Software that allows you to view statistics on your Web site, create/delete/edit email accounts, upload files, and utilize many other features. Cpanel is an example of management software. You can view a demo of Cpanel here: http://demo.cpanel.net:2082/frontend/x2/index.html

Supported programming (script) languages – Some hosting accounts support Web site programming languages such as PHP and MySQL, and some do not. The type of support required will depend on the programming languages used in your Web site. Ask your Web designer what requirements will be needed.

Email features (standard features) – Standard email features include a minimum of 10 email addresses, auto-responders (used to automatically respond to sent emails with a custom message), email forwarders (allows email to be forwarded to specific addresses), online email access through an Internet browser, and spam filters.