Like any other offline business, an online business needs an address, or place on the Internet where one’s Web site is positioned. No one can just have a Web site and “fuse up” on the Internet. Unless one is having his/her own server, he/she has to use a hosting company. A hosting company provides its users an online address. This online address allows the search engines and people incisive for one’s product or service to enable them to locate one’s website.

So what is the entire dilemma about regarding hosting sites? Understanding a hosting provider’s websites can be considered equal to just as speaking a foreign language. They are full of numeric and characters and if one doesn’t know what they are describing, it can be both confusing and irresistible. Example: there is 50 mg space, and 2-gig data transfer, and front-page extensions, secures servers. What’s it all signify?

It is often considered that one don’t have to be a talented to have a great hosting service that serves his/her needs. One wants to be a well-known specialist in his/her particular field, and let the hosting company do his/her work, by providing excellent hosting and service. All what is required is to have a common awareness about hosting.

Now coming back to beginning one can assume hosting company as the highway department that permits the traffic, search engines, and people right to use to one’s website. The reason that this is highly central boils down to bucks in one’s pocket. One will feel great if his/her site is working properly but if his/her site is down, and not operating, people will buy somewhere else and how fair is that?

Firstly one should lay down probability that one will find the “ideal” hosting company. If one searches for his/her expectation, then surely what he/she will get is disappointment. Thus the most appropriate way to find a good hosting company is to look upon other site owners and webmasters what they make use of. People love to share their knowledge and one can frequently grab up many useful ideas.

Once one fined a company that seems to be hopeful, just one should see the kind of customer service offered. Customer support in the form of a “live” person to talk to is a very big advantage and well appeals a few extra fees. One should talk to the host companies on the phone, should explain what one is currently doing and should ask them if they can what one is searching for. Are they sociable, do they treat one like a human being; do they make recommendations without being assertive? Are they competent to flourish with one’s industry? The key to these queries will give one a better initiative of how to carry out a business successfully. Now after knowing the entire key points its up to the user to search the best out of the rest.

Before starting, user should be very sure that becoming a successful web host is not possible by just reading the books rather it needs practical experience. It really sounds easy to run servers but actually running it is a damn difficult job. In many cases people who have taken good precautions while choosing an experienced server but still they should know by their own how to deal with security threats, downtime and fixing program errors, then only they can work properly else they have to face big problems.

Starting ones own hosting services is not an easy task rather it is very challenging and some times even irritating. One option to think about is reseller-hosting plans. There are many good web hosting companies offering paid reseller hosting and relieving user form wasting time in maintaining servers. One may consider this option to get a customer base going.

One can rent, lease or buy the servers, if he decides to buy the servers, he should get it custom made according to his specific needs, if user is having sufficient money, he can try to get a server that best fits into his plans. He will need a place to keep the server. He can find local building to do this or he can also keep it at home. But utmost care is required if user chooses the option to keep server as home as else it can lead to problem which one even cant imagine.

After crossing all these steps its time to choose the operating system. Now the next question that arises in one’s mind is-which operating system to be used i.e. Windows, Unix, etc., the next step is to opt the control panel like Cpanel, Plesk, etc., which security to use and many more. All these steps should be followed by proper research and care should be taken before finalizing anything. User should also keep in mind that if everything is going according to his requirements or not. User must also consider that there is several programming languages that can only run on certain operating systems, most web site owners want programming languages such as PHP or PERL.

There are many actions that should compulsorily be performed by the user and one of them is he should always keep his servers up to date with the latest security patches. He will need a good firewall; the firewall is first protection one has and most probably the best one. It’s also very important to monitor the servers full time for any errors, hackers or virus, one slight carelessness can lead to hacking of one’s server and result can be loosing all customers.

If any one desires to get the highest possible server uptime then he will require multiple Internet connections. Depending on the area in which one resides, it may be tough to find an Internet connection provider. One will need a fixed IP address, that won’t change after each use. All providers don’t offer this; so it is the responsibility of the users to check before he chooses.

Another point to consider is the pricing issue i.e. what are the charges one should ask for his web hosting services? If he is charging too high people will leave as being expensive, at the same time if the charges are quite low then too people will leave thinking servers are overcrowded with another web sites and that the services offered will be terrible. Now the question is what kind of plans to offer? Shared, reseller or dedicated hosting or maybe all of them.

When anyone really thinks about all these points, then he knows how difficult it is to become a successful web host and then the option which he considers best is to go with a reseller hosting plan, this will at least give one the taste of what he needs to do and help build him building a customer database

Choosing cheapest web hosting is not a good deal. If the user will only consider the money factor then he will have to regret later on as he will not get all the required facilities and the package he has chosen will then prove havoc.

If any user launches his website earlier in the “dark ages” of 1997 at that time he was charged $150 per month for hosting and data transfer charges. Then his web host keeps a close eye like an eagle over the number of files he uploads and always sends their heavily built invoices earlier with each passing month.

This is the claim not by just one person but by many people. Then suddenly a whole industry of “bargain” web hosts sprang up all over the web.

At that time cheap web hosting providers grows very rapidly as users welcome them very cheerfully. Now one can easily get the hosting facility by just spending $4.95 per month, as against $150 per month that he was paying for the same service earlier.

Just 5 bucks per month sounds really very interesting, until one realizes the amount of data transfer (number of page views) and bandwidth (the amount of data transfer his host allows in a 24 hour period) he gets for that cheap price harshly confines his capacity to do business.

This recognition – As soon as one recognized this fact as well as after understanding how data transfer and bandwidth gets calculated, one tends to recognize the disadvantages that he was suffering due to cheap price.

If any user exceeds the bandwidth limit allotted, then his bargain host will just shut down his site without any warning or else will send a huge bill.

Later on the webmasters who are truly professional realize that they’ve made a mistake by selecting a cheap host as their site suddenly gets shut down in the middle of a big promotion because of huge traffic. At that moment as one’s business is totally dependant on web site it seems like as if his whole business stops moving.

There are some cheap hosts providing good service, but one has to take utmost care and caution especially in the matter of bandwidth as it effects a lot afterwards when one’s business grows.

By just paying $24.95 per month one can get to host up to six independent websites with a single account. One gets unlimited data storage, unlimited email and a variety of other higher end services, but their bandwidth policy seems really hard to understand. So one should think again while hosting a bargain web host.

Features:

Web host reseller accounts normally come with a reseller-level control panel that allows one to create packages of his/her choice.

One can also assign disk space and bandwidth to each site on the account and can change the space and bandwidth specifications, in case it is required by the site for any modification or change.

Generally reseller accounts provide the option for private nameservers also known as private label, personalized nameservers, or virtual name servers. Example, if one’s reseller account is with Some Name Hosting and his/her company’s name is let say Name Services; now in that case one’s clients will enter ns1.examplename.com and ns2.examplename.com for the nameservers for his/her domains.

It’s easy to handle account setup, billing and support for one’s client using a web host reseller account. Usually one’s web host provider maintains the servers and answers support questions.

Talking about size a few starter reseller hosting packages are as small as just 500 MB, while other reseller providers offer packages starting at 1 GB or even larger. Not only that a wide range of packages is also available, with few going as high as 30 GB of disk space.

Features:

Web host reseller accounts normally come with a reseller-level control panel that allows one to create packages of his/her choice.

One can also assign disk space and bandwidth to each site on the account and can change the space and bandwidth specifications, in case it is required by the site for any modification or change.

Generally reseller accounts provide the option for private nameservers also known as private label, personalized nameservers, or virtual name servers. Example, if one’s reseller account is with Some Name Hosting and his/her company’s name is let say Name Services; now in that case one’s clients will enter ns1.examplename.com and ns2.examplename.com for the nameservers for his/her domains.

It’s easy to handle account setup, billing and support for one’s client using a web host reseller account. Usually one’s web host provider maintains the servers and answers support questions.

Talking about size a few starter reseller hosting packages are as small as just 500 MB, while other reseller providers offer packages starting at 1 GB or even larger. Not only that a wide range of packages is also available, with few going as high as 30 GB of disk space.

This is well known that due to tough competition where all providers become very smart in presenting themselves, it is very difficult for the customers to choose one of them for their business. The only help line left with the customers is “knowledge”, as by knowledge only the customers are able to decide for what factors to be considered while making decision. It is important for customer to gain knowledge but the point is how and from where to acquire knowledge.

In service sector knowledge plays very crucial role such as the knowledge of the technologies behind the service, knowledge about the folks behind the service, knowledge of the customer service, knowledge of scaling of quality of the hosting available and many more things to be listed.

The very first step taken by most of the customers is to create a budget boundaries for the hosting service, but the professional users who knows the worth of reliable hosting will place the monetary factor not on the top but some where in the middle on his total considerable factor’s list. Rather it is considered important even before one acquires knowledge of the factors to be considered.

Now lets look at one example, if the budget which one has allocated is less then 100$ then he/she ignore terms like dedicated servers collocation, etc. however more the budget more are there chances to learn.

There are many sources to acquire knowledge, the first and foremost source is to read more articles as articles shows the complete picture, more reading means more knowledge .One more advantage of this means is that it is the cheapest mean to acquire knowledge. The topic once chosen to read is based on the budget. Budgeting is not just about money but also about time. One should read the topic according to his/her requirements and should consider the sources correctly.

One very crucial point the customer should keep in his/her mind is that he/she should always go for the right source of information ,so as to choose a good hosting provider. Customer should also have answers of some particular questions such as is he/she knows the meaning of five nine’s and its need for the business. Does customer want PHP technology for his/her web site? Will the customer give preference to a dynamic and faster website over a reliable standard search friendly simple web site?

When customer visits each of the providers then all of them will try their level best to sell their huge plan that contains the features that are never required.

Let’s look at another example; the factor that makes the hosting provider expensive is Urchin stats, actually for this, the providers have to pay a good license fee which they use to transfer on the customer’s shoulder. For running a good business some of the free stats or the open source solutions are more than enough. The hosting providers make these additions to make their package more attractive. One needs to judge through the core features and then finally should go in for the add-ons, which may complement the core.

Let’s move further and look at the other sources. The other reliable source is that customers can talk directly with the hosting providers and ask them for an honest opinion on the features which his/her business requires. So the conclusion is that after reading the articles and getting directly contact with 8 or 9 providers, one can have a good amount of knowledge and can say that he/she now can act intelligently while choosing hosting for him/her. Generally what happens, the small website owners make silly mistakes such as they compromises with cheap sources and ignore the rest things. There are many providers who are ready to provide their services at very cheap rates but their services are of no worth and unreliable ,as when ever they are needed they gets disappear.

A good provider is the who always provides the proper support when ever needed and also charges the customers according to the support provided .At last but not least the important source with whom the user can consult is with the web consultants or one can talk to folks who have hosted before. This is a long process but the knowledge customer gains from this source are really appreciable. When a user negotiates for a best deal and when he/she gets all his/her issues resolved or one’s when business grows it is then that a real good host is required to make one’s success a history.

1. Prefer the policy which one wants to put in application.

More open source software programs are based on Linux and not for Windows, this factor which makes Linux quite cheaper. While the majority of programs (Perl, PHP, Flash, etc.) run on both stands, a little will process on only Windows or Linux. Requirement of a Windows platform is must for a site that requires ASP or MS Access.

2. Select the control panel one wants to bring into play.

Control panels for websites can be categorized from basic to advance. As a reseller, one would also have a control panel for him/her to manage and command the hosting accounts.

In selecting the Hosting Automation Software, several panels are compared possessing excellent features for web host resellers.

3. Pick the right host.

One must choose the web host company after taking into consideration all the aspects —. Factors to keep in mind when choosing a web host for a reseller account:

The platform and control panel

Account features

The company’s status — quest for online reviews by customers

The verification of server uptime

The level of support — the gap between the asked support and the support actually provided especially time-sensitive ones?

Elasticity — does the web host have packages that can uplift one in the period of scarcity? Will they modify their steps in the rigid circumstances?

How much experienced is the web host— while an innovative web host probably be very effective, many web-hosting businesses do not survive even for 12 months

Price-one should check what he/she is getting for the price quoted.

Now coming up to Reseller hosting-

4. Set up of one’s own hosting strategy and fees

One should divide and should find out the ratio of bandwidth to disk space that one can put forward. Take into consideration any ratios that fluctuate due to difference in packages, and then one should base his/her packages on that ratio.

One should consider the prices prevailing in the market .However one should also take into account the additional facilities if provided by the host provider.

5. Build up a commercial site

One has three main alternatives for site development:

Crafting a website by putting in use an open website pattern

For crafting of site summon a designer or a design group.

If one is having good designing skills as well as techniques, then there is no harm for him/her to develop a site by his/her own.

There must be an ideal ethics in the information that clients deserve and want to know.

6. Build a site which is e-commerce geared up

To be in a condition of receiving payments for hosting accounts, one will have to set up:

An SSL permit

A trade account

An expense access

7. To set up a helpdesk

A helpdesk permits clients to remain in touch with their provider so as to get desired response of their queries.

8. To systemize billing

With automated billing system, it’s quite easy to register billing as well as to make payments to clients. There are several billing software licenses that are rated on monthly or yearly basis, Life span licenses are also given by some billing software companies at an offered amount.

Examples of some popular billing and payment processing systems:

WHM.Autopilot

Whois.Cart etc

When one chooses a billing software program, he/she must check if it’s friendly with his/her server platform and if support is integrated.

9. Generating a welcome email

One must send a welcome email to his/her client after setting up his/her own hosting accounts .The email should contain:

A confirmation of the plan details, name server names ,a username and temporary password ,a link to the control panel ,links to one’s own knowledge base / FAQ and to his/her own helpdesk etc.

10. Promoting a website

One must put forward his/her site to search engines. One must put his/her knowledge into the minds of his/her family, peers, and colleague’s .One should contain a link to it in one’s signature line in departing mails. However one must not stop here instead should promote his/her website through incoming links, marketing, newsletters, and unique offers.

Some hosting companies which are considered better than these average companies even provides the facility to their users to use a nice Eye Candy control panel that helps them to manage their site. Some times they’ll even throw in a website statistics app as well. For most web site hosting companies that’s about it! As many web site hosting services are least interested in providing more service to the users for their money.

Many people are satisfied with this, as they don’t know that there’s a lot more for running an Internet business than simply hosting the site.

Most of the people are unknown and don’t know that there are several new companies out there offering way, way more than other companies. These companies serve best features with low cost. Thus the only thing required is that one needs to be well informed about good companies as well as should know the criterion to select an appropriate hosting company.

Features of a good hosting company

Following are some of the features that one needs to know if he is looking for a new web site hosting service or planning to transfer his web site.

He needs to look out for:

1) A web site hosting service that provides him facility to add new domains for a small fee without having to pay any additional monthly fee. Thus a user can host many domains and still pay one monthly fee, thus it leads to saving much money.

2) User always admire a web site hosting service that will help him to publish and manage his own newsletter so that he can regularly follow-up with his prospects and customers and thereby increase his sales. User should also look that if the company is giving him the option to publish a newsletter in both HTML and text format or not.

3) Users are in search of a web site hosting service that can set up an unlimited number of follow-up auto responders, so that they can automatically follow-up with their prospects and send them a series of emails one after the other whenever they want.

4) A web site hosting service should be the one that helps the user to personalize all his newsletters and follow-up emails. So that user can mention the name on the beginning of all his newsletters and emails with something like “Hi George” or “Hi Fem”. Most people know that personalizing emails has proven to increase response rates by as much as 40% – 50% in some cases.

5) A web site hosting service that helps one to set up his own affiliate program so that other website owners can promote one’s site or products and can earn commissions on the sales.

6) A web site hosting service that gives the user the option to track the results of all his advertising campaigns like banner ads, eZine ads, ads in pay per click engines. By the help of these features user will exactly get to know that how many visitors he is receiving from each source, and also how many sales he is receiving from each source. This information will help him to take better decisions as related to what to optimize and what to dump?

7) A web site hosting service that provides user the option to sell multiple items from his web site using a shopping cart that calculate things like taxes and shipping costs in real time.

A web site hosting service that facilitates the user to protect his download page if he wants to sell digital products like e-books or software from his site. Also a website should protect one’s members only site or signup page so that only genuine customers can download his products or sign up for his membership site. Thus avoiding fraud.

9) A web site hosting service that provide security from spam like providing the facility to set up junk mail filters so that any junk mail that one receives, is first filtered out before reaching the account.

10) A web site hosting service that contains built-in anti-virus software so that any virus containing emails that user receives will be automatically deleted.

11) A web site hosting service that offer good costumer support. Fast response is crucial in this field. A good web site hosting service responds his user within 24 hours.

Thus if one will consider the above features while selecting a web hosting company there are chances for proper growth of his business.

After creating and designing one’s own website he/she wants to host his/her own website other wise all the hard work will go in vain. Deciding the host for the website is far more difficult job then creating and designing it. While choosing host one should be very careful and should gain proper knowledge. One should consider all the factors while opting one host, as if this one decision went wrong then all the previous work will ruin.

Following are the few factors to be consider while choosing hosting plan-

1. Uptime of the web server?

2. Does the SSL is provided by the server or not?

3. Does the server avail server side scripting (e.g. PHP, ASP)?

4. What type of host to choose Free or paid?

5. What is the upload limit and file limit?

6. Support provided to the Customer.

Now we are going to take the above factors one by one:-

1– Uptime of the web server.

While hosting one’s website he/she wants that his/her server should always be up, as if website faces downtime it will result in the loss of traffic as well as of goodwill. The customer will never visit a website which remains down most of the hours so it is very important to choose host which provides maximum uptime.

Search engines will never give position to the website that always faces the downtime.

These kinds of websites should not expect the traffic from the search engines.

One can get a web server that is usually up, by the help of the reviews of the different persons who have already used the web host.

2. Does the SSL provided by the server or not?

If one created his/her own website just for the personnel use, not for doing any transactions on his/her website then SSL protection is not required.

If one who is not doing any transactions right now, but planning to do it in the future then he /she should opt for a web host that will provide SSL protection as and when required.

SSL is an encryption method which helps to encrypt any sensitive information like credit card info, names, etc

If a customer is going for a web host who is not offering SSL protection, in that case, installation of SSL will be very expensive as if afterwards he/she is trying to get it installed then the provider can charge what ever he/she wants for the SSL protection for transactions.

3. The third factor to look at it is does the server avail for server side scripting?

There are many web host providers who provides for server side scripting but still it’s important for customers to make sure that they do or don’t.

Server side scripting permits the webmaster to create pages which changes in real time.

For example, if one is running a business, and has all of his/her products stored in a database, and then a server side script will be helpful as it generates the pages that the customer sees according to the category/product he/she chooses.

If any of the web host provider is not providing the service of server side scripting, then it means that it will be a very silly decision to choose that web hosting.

4. What type of host to choose free or paid?

Now here comes the most important factor i.e. money factor which molds the customer’s decision. It’s hard for customers to decide that what to choose –free or paid host.

In case of free host, it has one and only one advantage that it is free, rest it has only and only complications in it.

The one who is not going to do any transitions by his/her site or created his/her website only as a hobby, then any of the free host will be ok for him. On the other hand for a professional customer, it will be good for him/her to not to look at for free hosting rather choosing for a paid host. Choosing free hosting will be of no use as it will never facilitate it’s customer due to lack of facilities in it.

Free web hosting has many disadvantages such as the hosters usually run ads on one’s home page.

The paid web host usually offers better customer support that is absent in free web hosting.

5. What is the upload/bandwidth limit and file limit?

If any customer is going for hosting large image files or if he/she wants to provide downloads to his/her users then upload/ bandwidth and file limit is very important.

But if anyone is making a hobby or business website then space is not a big deal for him/her and he/she can opt the host providing less space.

6. Customer Support

Now let’s talk about the Customer support which is very important. If any customer is suffering from any problem and he/she is not getting any support from his/her host then he/she will get irritate and leave the host. If any of the hosting company don’t want to loose his customers then it is important for the company to provide proper customer support and of course when ever needed.

Some web host providers even provide forums where customers like they can log in and post questions to other customers and web host staff.