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A hosting plan is like a parking space for a Web site that you rent out by the month (or year) on a host provider’s server. While there, and as long as the domain name is pointing to the host’s servers, the site will be accessible to anyone surfing the Internet with knowledge of the Web address. In the following sections, you find out how to find the right host provider and evaluate hosting plans.

Researching host providers

Like domain registrars, host providers are everywhere online, which means that finding the right one for your needs may require a little research. You could consult one of the hosting plan review sites, like Hosting-Review.com, Top10WebHosting.com, or TheHostingChart.com, to find the names of the most popular host providers. However, bear in mind that the host providers on those kinds of lists might be rated more for their pricing than for quality hosting and customer service.

Ideally, you want to pay a reasonable rate, get great technical support and customer service, have enough Web space on the server to host all your files, get the right number of e-mail accounts for your needs, have access to some good site-reporting tools, and be eligible for any special services and discounts that the host provider may have to offer.

On a personal note, having worked with many different host providers over the years, and having experienced firsthand the difference between good and bad customer support, I can highly recommend LunarPages.com for both domain registration and hosting plans.

To find the right host provider for your (or your client’s) project, keep the following tips in mind:

Referrals: A friendly recommendation can often be the best method for finding a reputable hosting plan. Most people either love or hate their host providers. If you keep hearing praise for the same host provider from different people, that can be a good sign.

Customer service: The single, most important feature of any hosting plan is customer service. Having 24-hour telephone and e-mail support is absolutely essential, so make sure that the host provider you are interested in offers this. If it doesn’t, keep looking. Customer service is so important because you will, at some point, need help and shouldn’t have to wait a long time to get it. Ideally someone should be there, 24/7, to help answer your technical questions and resolve any server-related issues.

Furthermore, if you keep irregular work hours, it would be nice to be able to have your questions answered anytime, day or night. Make a list of all the host providers you are interested in and then call them to ask questions about their hosting plans. You can get a good sense about a company’s customer service by talking to one of its customer service representatives about hosting plans and customer support.

FTP and control panel: Be sure to inquire about ways that each hosting plan allows site access. At a minimum, you should be able to upload files using FTP (File Transfer Protocol). Some host providers offer only a custom-built “site console” or “control panel” with limited capabilities for uploading files. With FTP access, you have better control over uploading files when it’s time to publish the site.

Cancellation policy: Be sure to also ask each company about its cancellation policy and whether that includes a refund. If for any reason you decide you want to switch plans to another host provider sometime in the future, it would be nice if you could get a refund. The host providers that do offer prorated or partial refunds are often the ones with the best customer service and hosting plans.

Although monthly rates can run as low as $1.50 and as high as $99, most plans range from about $4.95 to $39.95 per month and differ by the terms of service they provide:

Uptime: The total time within any 24-hour period where the site is accessible to visitors on the Internet. Anytime a host provider’s server goes down, for whatever reason, domains on that server go offline, which is commonly referred to as downtime. An uptime of 100 percent is the ultimate goal of all host providers, but most will only guarantee a 99 percent uptime rate.

Hard drive space: This is the total number of megabytes (MB) or gigabytes (GB) of space allotted for the domain on the host provider’s server. To determine your Web site’s hard drive space needs, multiply the number of pages by 30K and then factor in enough space to account for all the additional files required for the site, including all the graphics, documents, PDFs, and multimedia files.

You may also be able to estimate the total number of megabytes for your site through your HTML code editor. For example, in Dreamweaver, you can select all the files through the expanded Files pane and read the total byte count in the status bar. Typical small sites can make due with as little as 500MB–1GB of space, whereas e-commerce sites can require upward of 30GB, depending on the number of products being sold.

User account: Depending on the Web site’s needs, the hosting plan can accommodate from one to several user accounts. Each account provides password-protected host server access to site management tools such as passwords, e-mail setup functionality, and billing information.

Data transfer and page views: The data transfer and page view figures refer to the maximum allowable number of times that visitors can access the pages (that is, the text, graphics, and other content) on the hosted site within a given time frame, such as a 30-day period. If the site is very popular, there could easily be over 30 million page views in a month!

Web-based statistics: Web-based stats can help site owners track the number of visitors to their site, including such details as the entry and exit URLs, the number of hits and page views, keyword analysis, and the number of returning versus new visitors.

Dedicated IP address: Domains with a dedicated IP address will be hosted on their own servers as opposed to sharing a server with other domains. Dedicated IP plans are more expensive than Web sites that use a shared IP address, but they are also ultimately more reliable because a dedicated server can more accurately monitor its own Web traffic and provide faster server response times. A dedicated IP address can also sometimes be a requirement for sites that need an SSL certificate depending on the host provider’s setup, so be sure to ask about this if you intend to get an SSL certificate.

Domain pointer: This feature, which may cost a few extra bucks per month, allows one domain to automatically reroute visitors to another domain. Domain pointers can often be useful when a business wants to provide for misspellings of a domain name so that anytime visitors try to view the misspelled domain, they’re automatically directed to the correctly named site, such as www.yahooo.com pointing to www.yahoo.com.

Shop around, do your research, speak to friends and business associates, and make your decision. After you choose a host provider, just sign up for the desired hosting plan. If you’re also registering a domain for the first time when signing up for the plan, the site should be ready for use right away. If the domain was registered elsewhere, you can do the DNS transfer from the registrar to the host’s servers as soon as you are ready to publish the site. You (or your client) can also set up e-mail boxes and adjust them at any time after the plan is paid for. Later, if you (or your client) are not happy with a particular host provider, you can always switch to another provider at any time.