If you're looking for a web hosting provider to host your website or blog, there are several features you ought to think about prior to purchasing the cheapest package you may find. Not all web hosting providers offer the very same services for comparable rates. You need to carefully scan each offer and look for the features that you require to host your site.

1. Disk Space

Disk space, or web area, is the expression used to describe the quantity of information that you can store via your web hosting accounts. Whether you'll be utilizing HTML, pictures, sound or movie files, they all take up disk space from your web hosting account.

Now-a-days, even the most affordable shared web hosting packages provide lots of disk space to host your site. Do not settle for less than one gigabyte of disk space even in the event that you don't need it. Most web hosting providers offer their customers hundreds of gigabytes at incredibly cheap monthly fees.

2. The monthly transfer volume, also called bandwidth, is a phrase used to refer to the total amount of information that your specific web hosting accounts can receive and ship throughout the month.

Most web hosting accounts will give you lots of Gigabytes of bandwidth each month. The more visitors your site receives, the higher your bandwidth will be. Keep an eye on this traffic. If it gets close to your monthly limitation, consider moving to a greater net package that provides a greater monthly bandwidth.

Web hosting providers offering a high beginning bandwidth means that you'll have the ability to keep in that plan longer that is an advantage to you. Most good web hosting providers will provide bandwidth at the assortment of 250 Gigabytes to over 1 Terabyte of monthly visitors.

3. Linux vs. Windows Hosting

Most beginner hosting packages will offer Linux based web hosting simply because it is often cheaper for them to run. However, Linux is a very fast and dependable operating system. Most Linux systems run the Apache web server that accounts for over 50 percent of the Internet's web hosts. It isn't important that you're creating your web pages on a Windows PC. They may be hosted on a Linux server with no problems.

Window web hosting is ideal for those requiring Active Server Pages (ASP) performance or want better integration with Microsoft SQL server.

Linux plans normally tend to be slightly cheaper, and that's the reason why you'll see a lot of these around. This is likely your best option unless you've got specific requirements that just a Microsoft server can meet.

4. Web Databases

Whether it's a MySQL or Microsoft SQL database which you want, make sure that the hosting plan you buy has access to some. Even if you don't need it initially, you might need it in the future and most beginner hosting plans offer at least access to a single database within their bundles.

These databases have a huge array of applications. By storing proprietary information to your company to forming the backend storage for blog add-ons like Wordpress or Joomla, then you'll need to gain access to a database to make these features work.

5. e-Mail Space and POP3 / IMAP Access

If you want a professional allure for your site, an e-mail account with your organization name is vital. Just make sure that there are sufficient accounts for every worker who needs access to email on your business site and that there is sufficient net e-mail space for those combined users. E-Mail space is usually quoted as a separate listing from web space. Pay careful attention to what the best managed wordpress hosting providers provide you because this space is split up between all allocated email users.

6. Free Website Plug-In Scripts

These are scripts which are offered for you to automatically install as desired.

The automation allows for really simple integration with your website. A number of these products are extremely powerful and robust bundles, therefore this is an superb addition to have available.

7. Being able to log into your hosting account and make changes from the command line to your web pages is a remarkably handy feature. However, power users may benefit the most out of this option since some understanding of the underlying operating system, Linux, is required to navigate easily.

Not all web hosting providers offer this service, so if you feel you might need it, make certain that you find out beforehand whether it's accessible. Some provide it free as a part of this package, others have it listed as a paid add-in.