You will hear words like 25MB, bandwidth, ftp, email forwarding, php, cgi-bin and fantastico. All of these are things that are offered with different packages that you will find. Before you decide, let’s look at what you might need and how to know that you are receiving this.

Most website hosting companies will have their packages grouped by the various things they offer, of course the more you get the larger the price will be. The basic package is usually around 25MB of web space. This is how much space the hosting company will allow you to have on their web server. This is with shared hosting. There will be other websites also on this server with you, each with their own packages and amounts of space.

Bandwidth is how much data you are allow to use in a certain amount of time, usually monthly. Bandwidth is used each time you upload web pages, images, or some one visits your website. If you are only allowed a small amount of bandwidth like say 50MB then you may run out of bandwidth if you plan on adding a lot of pages, or you are expecting many visitors.

Ftp is a way of getting into your website through the backdoor. This will enable you to upload your web pages, images and install scripts in a pretty easy fashion. All you need to do is place the folders in the proper place in the correct folder.

Email forwarding can be very useful. You can have any email that is sent to your website forwarded to another email account that you have. This way no matter how many websites you have you have all the emails forwarded to one main account.

Php is a way in which website are coded. This is used for building scripts and even some template designs. Php is very popular for its fast loading time. Some php scripts will also require MySql database. This is another feature that you can add. These databases are very fast loading and do not require any maintenance after they are up.

Cgi-bin is another way to host different scripts. If you wish to use cgi scripts you must be sure that you have a cgi-bin included in your hosting package. These are some what more difficult than php scripts but many people enjoy these types of scripts.

Fantastico is a compilation of several scripts that can be installed directly from your control panel.

You can search online for hosting companies and remember to compare. If you are just wanting a simple website you will probably not need all the extra goodies and normally no more than 25MB of web space and around 500MB of bandwidth should work. You may even wish to try some free hosting until you understand how everything works. But, remember more than likely you will be offered a sub-domain like yoursite.theirdomainname.com. This is not the best way to get web traffic, so I would only use a free hosting company that would allow your own domain name and check out paid hosting as well. Many of these paid hosting companies can give you so much more than a free hosted site and the cost is not always tremendous.

If you are planning to launch a low budget web site you will find countless low cost web hosting plans. Sometimes you will get confused after analyzing these plans as they promise everything and sometimes too much in surprisingly low cost.

Define your needs first

The very first thing that should be done is to clearly define your exact needs and requirements. Analyze how much disk space you will need initially and try to anticipate the additional space that will be needed later on. If your site is going to have static pages with few images then even 20MB disk space is enough. But if your site is going to have dynamic pages with audio and video content then more disk space and database is needed. Some low cost plans offer only 1 or 2 databases of limited size ranging from 10MB to 50 MB. Let your technical expert assess how many databases will be needed and how large it can grow in near future. Another important factor is monthly data transfer. If you are going to spend some budget on SEO and advertising of your site then you can anticipate decent amount of traffic within six months. Remember, the bandwidth consumed in maintaining and uploading content on your site is counted in your monthly data transfer quota. So if your site is going to have large amount of fresh content on daily basis then you will need good amount of bandwidth.

Choose the appropriate plan

Once you have clearly defined your web site requirements and features, its time to do some research for choosing the most appropriate hosting plan that will suit your requirements and your wallet. A typical low cost hosting plan comes in the range of $4/month to $6/month. Most hosting providers give discount if the plan is taken for 12, 24 or 36 months, which can save up to 20% of your cost. Carefully read all the terms and conditions before taking the plan as it may have some hidden costs which may haunt you later. The most effective way to get the feedback about the hosting company is to contact existing customers and to hear their opinion. Specifically ask about support services. If existing customers are satisfied with the support services then put this company in your probable list. When you have short-listed all the companies then you can compare their hosting plans and should choose wisely as per your analysis. Always involve your technical expert in each decision making phase. Your potential hosting company should provide 24×7 technical support. After taking the plan you should check the promptness of technical support within one week in peak hours as it is crucial in running your website successfully without any hassle.

It may happen that you may not get good experience with your first hosting provider. Many new web site owners and novice webmasters may experience this situation. Choosing a good hosting provider and right hosting plan comes with experience.