Web Hosting Plan - What is Web Hosting Plan?
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In this article we will learn about Web Hosting plan and understand what is a web hosting plan? How to choose the right plan for hosting your website? There are many different types of web hosting plan provided by the hosting company. Some plans are cheap and others are expensive. It is necessary to choose the right hosting plan for getting most of your investments.
In any web hosting plan following main things are included:
- Disk space
- Bandwidth
- Setup fee
- Bandwidth
- E-mail account
- Control panel access (Yes/No)
- No of subdomains
- No of FTP accounts
While choosing a hosting plan first thing which is to be considered is the price and reliability. Many companies are providing very cheap hosting plan but their services are not so good. So, you should choose best web hosting plan from a reliable hosting company. Price should be second thing, first you should look at the reliability of the hosting company.
Web hosting plan is the different plans provided by Hosting Companies for hosting your web site. Web hosting plans include the storage limit, bandwidth, access to server resources, database base access etc. for your web site. Different hosting plans are provided by the Web Hosting Service Providers to cater the different requirements. Example of web hosting plans are:
- Mail Only Plans:
In this case web hosting provider will provide you the email server to send and receive the emails. In this case you can't put your pages on website.
- Beginners Plans:
This includes the static pages and email facility on the server. This plan for hosting the static pages on the web site.
- Intermediate Plans:
This plan may give you the all the features of Beginners Plans plus database access, support for scripting languages, JSP , Servlets etc. You can also add more features on requirements on some extra changes.
- Advance Plans:
This plan is good for high traffic web site. The hosting provider will charge handsome amount for advance hosting. Here you will database access, scripting supports, SSL Encryption, Shopping Cart and many more features.
Based on the OS and software support following hosting plans are also provided by hosting companies:
- Linux Hosting: Hosting plan available for the Linux based servers.
- Windows Hosting: Hosting plan available for the Windows based server.
- Linux Reseller Hosting: Many companies are giving Linux reseller hosting plans.
- Windows Reseller Hosting: The reseller hosting plan for windows platform.
Things to Consider While Selecting a Hosting
Plan
Web Hosting companies vary greatly in the options they offer to web developers,
but a number of standard features can be found in virtually all hosting plans.
Web space, e-mail capabilities, access to a CGI-Bin, FTP, Bandwidth and account
maintenance via web control panel are the most common features among all
reliable web hosts.
- Web Space
Hosting companies are allocation some space in each hosting account. This space is called web space and the space is then used by client to publish content there. So, you should find out space requirement for your website and then choose appropriate web hosting plan to host your websites. Once your business grows you can always purchase more space from your hosting service provider. Usually hosting companies are providing space in GB's e.g. 1GB hosting space, 10 GB Hosting space etc. Thus you should order enough hosting space while ordering your hosting plan.
- Bandwidth
Bandwidth is the measure of monthly outgoing and incoming data transfer on your hosting server (your domain). If your you are hosting video and audio content on your server and many people are accessing your website then your bandwidth requirement will be high. You should first calculate the no of users expected to be visited on your website. Then find out how much data will be transferred for each users. Then you can easily calculate your website bandwidth requirement. Once bandwidth is know, you can order required bandwidth from your hosting company while ordering your server.
- E-mail account and server
Your hosting company should have mail server installed and configured on your account. If you domain name is example.com then you might need few email address such as [email protected], [email protected] etc. Your hosting company should provide sufficient email account in your web hosting plan.
- CGI-BIN Access
If you have developed CGI based application then your hosting company should support CGI scripts.
- PHP Support
If you have developed dynamic website the you should select the hosting having PHP support.
- MySQL Support
MySQL database support is necessary for running database driven web applications. If database support is required you should order hosing plan having MySQL database support.
- FTP access
FTP is easiest way to upload and update file on server. Your hosting server must support FTP access.
Advanced Features
Server-side functionality including SSI, JavaScripting, Active Scripting, Java
Server Pages and PHP capabilities are among the added features . User logs and
error tracking along with daily site back-ups are also important components of a
quality hosting solution.
Control Panel
Some hosts give a special administrative page to each of their clients. This
enables the client to adjust certain attributes and check the status on certain
parts of their account without having to contact their host.
Upgrading Choices
Your website hosting company should provide the website upgrade
option. You should be able to order more space and bandwidth at any
time. The upgrade process should be easy and fast. Your website should
not go down at the time of hosting plan upgradation.
