Evaluating different Web hosting companies

• Hosting your Web site for free
• Paying for Web hosting

Today, one of the fastest growing Internet related businesses is that of Web site hosting. This trend is being driven in large part by people like you that want to get their businesses online, but don't want the headaches of buying special computers and telecommunications equipment to set-up their Web sites.

Web site hosts have dramatically simplified the process of "getting online" for small businesses. They provide online access to their computer servers, which in turn are connected to the Internet by high bandwidth		Verio Web Hosting Services
telecommunications facilities. All that you need is a PC and a dial up connection to the Internet, like AOL, and you can establish a Web hosting account with any of the of these different companies.

Costs for small business Web hosting range from free for a simple Web site to a few hundred dollars a month for a full blown e-commerce service. There are also more expensive hosting services, that can be in excess of one hundred thousand dollars a month, that are utilized by larger businesses such as eBay and Yahoo!. The discussion in this chapter is limited to the former services that are utilized by smaller businesses.

Before you select a Web site hosting company, you should have already decided on a domain name (www.yourbiz.com) for your online business, and settled on the features that you will require. Choosing a domain name in advance of selecting a hosting service is important because it will simplify your registration process. Knowing what features you will need will help you to select the right hosting plan.

Most Web hosts offer a variety of hosting plans, which are discussed in detail in the next section. These plans vary in price based on the amount of disk space you need for your Web site, the number of visitors you are planning to get every month, and any special features that you will require, like credit card processing or multi-media capabilities.

Web hosting companies differentiate themselves from the competition through their hosting plans, price points, customer service, and backbone infrastructure. Some of the things you will want to know about your Web host, include answers to the following questions:

Web Hosting Q&As

• What is the fee structure?
• Is technical support available 24 hours per day - 7 days a week (24 by 7)?
• Can I establish a Web hosting account online?
• How often can I update my site?
• Do you support Microsoft FrontPage in its entirety?
• Can I set up an online store?
• What types of credit card processing do you support?
• Can I shut my site down after a pre-determined amount of bandwidth?
• What is your reliability record?
• How large is your network?
• What types of connections do you have to the Internet?
• What type of connections do you offer to my online business?

Most of these questions can be answered by simply reading a description of the service on the Web host's site. If you need more information, or are unclear about something, make sure you call and find out. Selecting a Web hosting service that doesn't do what you want will lead to a lot of rework later on.

Hosting your Web site for free

There are still a lot of free services on the Web, including those that provide free Web hosting. If you already have a dial-up account with an Internet Service Provider, like America Online (AOL), then you may have seen advertisements like "publish your own Web site for free." Unfortunately, in order to take advantage of these offers, you will have to include the service's top level domain as part your online business name. In other words, your online business name will be a sub-subdomain to the service provider.

For instance, if you wanted to publish a Web site with Max Pages (www.maxpages.com), a popular free Web hosting service, your online business name would look something like www.maxpages.com/yourbiz The tradeoff is deciding whether you want a free Web site that requires you to include an advertisement for another business, like Max Pages, within your own online business name, or be autonomous and pay for your own domain name and Web hosting service.

The main advantage of a service like Max Pages is that it is free. Once you are connected to the Internet with a dial-up account, you can get a URL and create a Web site for no additional charges. Some of the disadvantages of these free services include:

• Your URL (www.maxpages.com/yourbiz) will be long
• Your URL will be hard to spell
• Your URL will be difficult to remember
• Your flexibility in Web site design will be limited -- normally you must use their design tools
• Your reporting capabilities (tracking visitors to your site) will be limited or non-existent
• You may be required to display advertisements you cannot control

Although there are numerous disadvantages to using a free service, you should try one out to see if it meets your needs. If you currently only have dial-up service to the Internet, and are exploring the possibilities of establishing an online business, then there is no better way to get your "feet wet" for free. Most of the services listed in the following table give you the capability to set-up Web sites for free, and since they are relatively easy to use, you can get your business online in less than a few hours.

To locate additional free domain hosting companies you can also try FreeLinks.org or FreeWebspace.net.

Paying for Web hosting

The features and functions available from Web hosting services that you have to pay for are much greater than their free counterparts. Most significantly, you will be able to set-up a Web site with your own domain name (www.yourbiz.com); have complete control over the design and layout of the site; and get access to a wide variety of traffic reports. Additionally, a good Web hosting service will provide technical support 24 hours per day on all seven days of the week.

Some of the more popular Web hosting services, as ranked by CNET in its Ultimate Web Host List, are shown in the following table. On its Web site, CNET provides a monthly ranking of the top 25 Web hosting companies based on value, customer service, quality and flexibility.

If you are planning to use FrontPage to create your Web site, you can also try Microsoft for a list of approved Web hosting services