Information on Choosing a Hosting Company
Choosing a proper web hosting company can be a big decision with all the hosts that are listed on the internet but you should try to make an informed and wise choice to start with. After all you probably want a website for doing business either locally or internationally and you will need your website to function correctly for the purpose intended.
You should first outline what you need your website to do and what its purpose is.
Is it just an informational site for showing what your company is and strictly advertising? Is it for ecommerce and needing ssl, shopping cart system and database support? Will your site be running special software or scripts requiring special functioning such as mod-rewrite, php, perl, asp, asp.net, or others?
These are very important considerations as many hosts do not support advanced functions and do not want to host sites that use them. If you choose a host that has only basic service and functions then you will be limited to a static web site with limited function-ability. If you need advanced functioning or think you may like to add new features to your web site then you need to study really what features the hosting company is going to provide you and what type of plans and hosting platforms. You will find that most hosting companies only provide basic Linux hosting plans with very limited features and functions and some use servers that are simply desktop computers.
But read below as to how they lure in the first time web sites and the uninformed with advertising huge or unlimited disk space or bandwidth.
1. Hosting Scam Plans
As most all wise people know - If it sounds too good too be true it usually is! All and we mean ALL web hosting companies have the same basic limitations when it comes to server resources and specs. There is no special type server that has a never ending supply of RAM and CPU power. Any web hosting companies claiming to give unlimited space or bandwidth are lying period! There is no such thing, all hosting companies have to pay for bandwidth and can only put just so much disk space on each server.
The thing to remember is that the average web site uses anywhere from 10 - 50 megs of disk space and less then 1 gig bandwidth a month. All hosting companies know this so what many of the hosting companies do is make up scam plans with tons of space and bandwidth for around $7 or less a month. Basically they lie to you to get your business! Possibly only one or two of every 100 people that signup on the plan are going to use all the bandwidth advertised. And guess what, that is not the customers they want anyway – they want sites that use less then 1 gig of bandwidth so they can make more money. So what do the hosting companies that use these tactics do when they have sites actually using large bandwidth and resources? They will most always notify you saying "your site is using too many resources and that they are going to have to terminate your account.
So the way these hosting companies get away with this is, if a site uses a lot of bandwidth they aren't ' t terminated for using too much bandwidth, they are terminated for ‘Abuse of Server', using too much of the servers cpu and ram which is in the terms of service of all hosting companies. The truth is they offer huge or unlimited disk space and bandwidth to lure in the uninformed that are just shopping for what looks like the most for the least and that is exactly the customers they want because they are gambling on 95% of them will never use over the average of 10-50 megs of disk space and use less then 1 gig of bandwidth a month, and if the do they will just boot them off to make room for more small accounts. What the educated webmaster of local and international company's websites know is, ‘nothing is free and there is no such thing as unlimited disk space and bandwidth'. When you stop and think about it, that is just plain common sense.
What the educated webmaster looks for in a hosting company is what features and support he needs for the software and scripts he may be running on his website and what hosting platform he may need. While Linux is a very good operating system, it is free and that is why so many hosting companies offer only this. But many sites may want on need Windows hosting to run ASP or ASP.NET programs and need MS SQL database support. Some may need Cold Fusion MX hosting to run some of the advanced Cold Fusion programs and maybe wish or need to use an Oracle database. Most hosting companies do not support these features because they cost a lot of money. So the educated webmaster will look at if the hosting company uses the platform he needs such as Linux, Windows, and Cold Fusion and also if they have full features in the plans such as php, perl, asp, asp.net, ssl, ecommerce capabilities, database support for My Sql, MS Sql, Access, Postgre, or Oracle if they need it and then look for reasonable disk space and bandwidth.
A good hosting company will give you fair reasonable plans at fair prices outlining the features, disk space and bandwidth with each plan and have in place options to extend your disk space or bandwidth if you find it necessary.
At International Web Solutions you will find complete full featured plans detailing all features available and pricing. Also with your advanced H-sphere customer control panel that we provide, you can add, modify or change features or plans instantly.
2. Annual Payment Schemes
One thing you will usually notice about some of these ‘Unlimited Resources' scam plans is that they want you to pay for a year up front to get the good pricing. Why would a good hosting company care if you pay monthly or yearly? After all if you ' re happy with them you ' re going to end up staying much longer than a year, probably as long as you are in business. Most people that set up a web site for business will keep it as long as they are in business. Well that should make perfect sense as a website is the cheapest form of local or international advertising that a company could have. A person would have to be crazy to shut down their business website unless they were out of business. So why would a hosting company want to try to force you to pay one year up front to get service or their ‘special price'? It must be because they really don't have the features, service and support that you may need and they know it, so they want to collect your money up front in case you find you aren't happy after the first month.
At International Web Solutions Web Hosting we offer only monthly plans as we want 100% customer satisfaction and we don't want you to feel trapped. We are so confident with the quality and features with our hosting and service that we give you a free 7 day trial period to test your website. Not many hosting companies will do that, but we do as we want you to be confident that we can provide you with the services and features that you need to be successful. We know that if you are successful with your online venture and are happy with our service then we will have you as a lifetime customer. And after all, that is what we are all in business for, to be successful and long term. We hope that 20 years from now you are doing great in your business and still using International Web Solutions for your web hosting provider because we too are in the business for the long term and plan on being here providing quality full featured hosting 20 years form now and more.
3. Purchasing a Domain Name
You should not signup with a host that provides you with a free domain name included in their hosting package. At first you may think that does not make sense, why not their giving away a free domain name. Well the gimmick usually is they are providing a free domain name and not giving you anything! What this means is that they register a domain name for you but the hosting company owns the domain name and not you. So if for some reason you do not like their hosting service then guess what, if you leave they may keep your name and since they registered it in their name there is nothing you could do about it. Never signup with a host providing a free domain name for you as most of the time they will be the owner of your name.
If you are serious about your business and plan on being in business long term then you must purchase your own domain name and make sure that it is registered in your name.
At International Web Solutions Domain Sales Department we have a complete separate organization for domain name sales and transfers. You get your own control panel to manage all features of your domain names and when you register a domain name you can register it in your name, your companies name or any name you choose. You have total control. It is a separate control panel and entity then the web hosting division. For your convenience when you register a domain name the dns is set automatically so you can host you website on our servers but if for some reason you want to use another hosting provider you are free to do so by changing the dns through your control panel. You don't have to ask anybody for anything. You have total and complete control of any and all of your domain names. For instance you could have some domain names registered to your company hosted on our servers and some domain names for a friend hosted through a different web hosting provider. The choice is yours right through your customer control panel.
Here at International Web Solutions we use Dual Zeon and Dual Opteron SCSI servers with at least 4 Gig of server grade ram. These are true high end web servers that will deliver the power and performance needed for professional websites running the latest software and scripts. We offer Linux Red Hat ES, Windows 2003, and Cold Fusion MX full featured hosting platforms with your own advanced H-sphere customer control panel which is the world's leader in advanced website control panels. You will see at International Web Solutions we give you for free with plans what most hosting companies cannot even offer as options. Browse through our plans and features and you will see things as free shared ssl, shopping carts, full database support of ALL of the major databases, full php support (some companies that give you php do not have all the php functions available). All our php functions are available to you including mod-rewrite, cURL, allow_url_fopen, etc. Many of our customers have switched to us after finding out that their former host did not even have proper php support and they could not run even a simple directory script.
You can depend on International Web Solutions Web Hosting to give you complete full featured hosting plans on any hosting platform you need at a fair price. After all we are so confident in our service and features that we give you a free 7 day trial period to test everything. We want you to be totally satisfied with your hosting and want to have you for a lifetime customer.
Choose the best business hosting package for your custom needs here! You can rely on International Web Solutions - expert international business hosting company and enjoy all the benefits of our premium international hosting network.
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