right hosting package for me

There are millions of hosting companies and web hosting reseller around the globe. and choosing one out of them is a real hard job.

It was almost 8 years back, when i ordered my first hosting account for my client. At initial, I was not aware of many things, and simple ordered the web hosting account to one of the hosting reseller. After a lot of problems, troubleshooting, pain, hassles and everything.... i feel now at least i can write an article on how to choose a web hosting.

Step 1: Identify your requirements. what do you want to host. A blog, HTML website, a dynamic website, Content management system, what's your database needs and what language support do you need etc.

commonly talked, there are are two types of hosting platform. one has linux OS and another windows. Linux is open source operating system and thus linux platform web servers are cheaper than windows hosting servers.

• If your website is designed using the pure html only, you can opt for any of the above.
• If you wanna host wordpress blog, advisable is LAMP, the linux hosting with apache server, mysql database and php.
• if you wanna host a website designed using asp or asp.net, you need windows hosting.
• if you are running a cms on ms sql server, and designed in asp or asp.net, you need windows server with mssql database.
• for a php based cms, with mysql database, LAMP is required.

After choosing the right platform, the second step is to identify the bandwidth and hosting space requirement.

third goes is the server hardware. please ask the hosting provider about it. which CPU, how much is RAM, what type of hard disk, speed of public up-link network port, backup facility etc.

There are multiple companies offering unlimited everything. MAKE IT CLEAR, NOTHING COMES UNLIMITED. identify the crack and make sure that hosting account suits your requirements.

• a hosting account with unlimited bandwidth, unlimited hosting but only few bytes database is worthless for a blog, cms and any data driven website.
• a hosting account with unlimited bandwidth, unlimited hosting but limiting the number of images or size of uploaded files, are also never advisable.
• a hosting account with unlimited bandwidth, unlimited hosting but very low uplink speed and very old processor or very few bytes of RAM is also not a smart choice.

there are peoples who wanna shift there server for various reasons, the best way is to buy a server prior to moving from old hosting provider, place your latest file on new server, change the name server entries, and wait for atleast 4-5 days, before closing the old hosting account. it will give your site zero down time. 

Domain Names and Domain Name providers are also as important as web hosting.

There are companies offing a single window services for all web related services. These companies provide one panel access to manage the hosting and domain name features. Please make sure that you have all features available on your control panel, else you may have to pay extra when you need any of those non-available feature.

Recently, I came across the hosting control panel of NetSol and found that manage DNS was available to only those client, who have bought both domain and hosting from NetSol. and the same feature is available FOC with many more, not so advertised web hosting companies. Even domain name providers also offer the same feature FOC.