General rule of thumb is not to sign up for yearly
web hosting plans. Instead, get monthly plan where
you can unsubscribe from on the second month when
you are not happy with the service. That is, if you
ended up with an unreliable web hosting company in
the first place.
Here is a simple guide that can be easily
applied to typical web sites:
--Web Space--
Expect a small website to take up 10 and 100 MB.
Considering that you may want to expand your website
in the near future, it is advisable to get a web hosting
plan with ample web space.
Make sure that you know your needs before you start
looking for your web host. Not every web hosting plan
can be upgraded or customised. More than often, webmasters
do not get the features they need and are not able
to customise their web hosting features.
--Monthly Traffic--
Data transfer per month are typically referred to
as bandwidth. It is the amount of data transfer that
occurs between your website and visitors. A small
or medium web site will consume between 1 and 5GB
of data transfer per month. Larger, commercial or
popular websites often consume more than 5GB of monthly
data transfer and sometimes, exceeding 100GB of monthly
data transfer.
Before you decide on a web hosting plan,
be sure to check this:
- What is the monthly data transfer/ bandwidth allowed?
- Will you be charged if your website exceeds its
limit?
- Are you able to upgrade/add on your bandwidth?
--Connection Speed--
Visitors to your web site will often connect via
56K modems or ADSL modems but your web host provider
should have a much faster connection. Your website
should have high web site connections that are approximately
1000 high speed (56 Kilobytes per second) modems combined-
T3 fiber optic connections.
In the early days of the Internet, T1- connections
was considered a fast connection. The fastest connections
available are T3 connections that are used by Internet
Service Providers and major corps.
