Website Hosting

Once you've settled on a domain name for your new website you are going to have to find a place to have it hosted. You're choices here are mind boggling. You could choose your local web hosting company and support your local community or you can choose from dozens of large national hosting companies.

While it might make you sleep better knowing you are supporting your community having your website hosted locally, it might not be the best decision. I have previously worked for one of these companies and know first hand all the extra fees that larger companies offer free.

You should be able to have ftp access to your account at no extra charge, some hosting providers will charge extra for this option or not offer it at all. The reason for doing this is because the average user doesn't know how to properly code and can do more damage then good to their own site. The hosting provider is looking out for your best interest and for a fee they will make any changes to your site when it fits into their schedule.

Web stats is another one of those extra fees that smaller hosting providers have been known to charge for. If you are serious about your website then you will need to have regular access to your sites stats to track performance. I have seen clients charged as much as $15 every time they receive a copy of their stats.

E-mail, although not part of your website is an essential part of your web presence and should also be included from your hosting provider. Some smaller hosting companies will make you pay for email accounts or give you a couple free email accounts and then charge you for more. Whereas the larger hosting providers will usually offer you more e-mail accounts then you will ever need.

While the previously mentioned differences will have no effect on your actual website or its up-time, the amount of time your site is online. Occassionally servers go down or need work done, this can cause your site to not be available and cause you money. The large hosting providers have people on staff 24 hours a day in case anything were to happen to the servers. Where do you think people are when a server crashes at 8:00 p.m. at your local hosting providers company? The longer your site is down, potentially the more money you are not making.

While I am generalizing these references, I have had personal experiences with both and have over payed and gotten less services from local hosting companies. I now use and recommend godaddy for website hosting and registration.

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