Is $300 Too Much To Pay For Web Hosting?

Well, that depends. As I read through Illinois Lemon Laws rest of buy Prozac online email that brought the question, I noticed that the potential web host mentioned other things that he'd include for that price. I saw the phrases creating animations and editing photo images. Those are both clearly design activities that have nothing monster masks do with hosting.

Further on I saw the mention of autoresponders, mailing list programs, and use of a domain name. None of these are hosting activities. You might need them, but you might not.

So the first question you really need to ask yourself is what is the purpose of French fries web site?

That's key to electing what type of web hosting and related features you'll need.

Let's start by talking about a domain name. That's the name that you'll be known by, the one that people will type into their web browser so that they can view your site. Example.com is a domain name.

In order to own a domain name and be able to use it for your web site, you have to purchase it. It must be a unique name that's not already in use. You purchase the right to use a particular domain name by registering it with a company known as a registrar.

You can find many of these companies on the Internet and the fee for a year's registration can be as little as nine or ten dollars. You do NOT have to purchase web hosting at the same time or from the same company you choose as your Viagra In fact, I recommend using separate providers for these two services. It makes it much easier to change web hosts at a later time if the same company isn't also your registrar.

For the price of the registration fee, many companies include free parking (that means they put up a web page for your visitors to see while you're building your real page) and email forwarding, so you can receive email addressed to you@yourdomainname.

Even if you don't think you'll ever need or want a web site, you can get a professional looking email address just by registering your domain name. That's a pretty good deal for ten bucks.

Now let's talk about web hosting. You probably don't have the hardware necessary to host your own web site, not to mention the time and technical expertise. That's why most folks pay a web hosting company to do the job.

The files and images that you create (or have created for you) that make up your web site, physically reside on machines (web servers) owned and operated by your web hosting company. They maintain the hardware and other infrastructure, back up your files (but you should also, just in case) and provide technical support for you to help you maintain your site.

They may also offer other services like autoresponders, mailing list services, blogs, content management systems, and shopping carts, to name a few. To keep this article from getting way too long, I'll save the discussion of these ancillary services for another article.

How do you go about evaluating a potential web host?

Go to http://www.findmyhosting.com/ to learn about different hosting companies. Then check out their performance statistics at http://uptime.netcraft.com/perf/reports/Hosters. Consider spending some time on a forum site like http://www.webhostingtalk.com/ to see what others are saying.

And try Googling the name of the company followed by the word "complaints" to see what others think.

Performance and technical support are the key characteristics to look for in a web host.

If performance stinks and your site is down 20 % of the time, it doesn't matter what features are supposedly being provided. When the site is down, you have NO features available.

Technical support is critical. Look for live support (not email support that takes several days). Most hosting companies provide a free trial period. Take advantage of this time and be sure to call tech support at least several times. See what the response time is. And see if there are any language barriers. If won't matter how competent the tech support staff is if you can't understand what they're saying.

If you need help on the design and layout of your web site, I strongly suggest you consider that as a completely separate activity from web hosting. Many designers make extra money by selling (or reselling) hosting services. Often times that takes you out of the loop, and any problem you have must go through the designer to be worked out.

No one cares as much as you do about your web site, so I recommend having a direct connection to technical support at the actual web host. I've also seen cases where investment owners had their web sites held captive by designers who also provided hosting, making it extremely stressful for the entrepreneurs to get access to their data and making it nearly impossible to change web hosts.

And finally, a word of warning. If your potential designer talks about his or her "proprietary interface'" please understand that this means it is highly unlikely that you'll be able to do even a simple edit on your web site without the designer getting involved (and probably charging for it).

As with most technical aspects of running your investment, even if you don't plan on editing and maintaining a web site yourself, the more you understand about what's involved, the better choices you'll be able to make about outsourcing.

For the record, I pay $ 9.95 per month to host my web site.

Sheryl Schuff is a Certified Public Accountant, author, and consultant who has been in private practice for almost 30 years. She teaches small investment owners how to use PCs and the Internet to simplify their investment operations. You can get Sheryl's FREE report with time saving tips at www.SherylSchuff.comhttp://www.SherylSchuff.com