Reliable Affordable Web Site Hosting

Reliable affordable web site hosting is no longer just a crafty sales pitch to lure bloggers and small businesses looking to venture out onto the web. Progress in cost cutting technologies and high demand in web hosting triggered waves of new web site hosting providers, the end result was the birth of truly reliable affordable web site hosting. Allow me to reveal to you the best of the best among these web hosts.

Business is all about supply and demand, currently I would define web hosting as a buyer's market. But broad choice also translates to lots of confusion in the selection process and therefore you could easily end up with a poor web host provider.

In part due to the increasing competition, more and more web hosts are providing reliable web site hosting at an affordable rate. A good measuring stick to a web hosting provider's real proficiency would be to check how long it's been around. After all, you may fool someone into a poor service initially, but what keep businesses like web hosting alive are the loyal clients.

It's a real simple strategy, provide the advertised reliable affordable hosting and your clients will stay with you. Another stat to look for is the number of clients it serves and do ignore the claims that industry giants like Hostgator cram too many users in a single server. There's absolutely no way to retain thousands of clients unless you outperform most of your competitors.

So does affordable web hosting translate to zero reliability? Absolutely not, and the whole purpose of this site is to give you the choices, their pros and cons, and the unique features of individual web hosts so you can make sound decisions.

How will you know it's an affordable reliable web site hosting unless you know what you are are shopping for?

Bandwidth - governs the amount of traffic your website can handle. Note: The higher the bandwidth the better.

CPANEL - an interface which allows you to control the data and information on your web server conveniently.

Dedicated Hosting - unlike shared hosting, you are allotted your own hosting server. It's more expensive than vps and shared hosting, but you get increased server speed and decreased server downtime.</li>

Disk Space - otherwise known as "Hosting Space", is the amount of space allocated to your web server.

Domain Name - this would be the name of your site, visitors will enter this name in an address bar to visit your site.

Domain Name Forever - you normally pay a yearly fee for the ownership of your domain name, but some hosting services will provide you with a free domain name "forever" as part of a package.

FTP - an acronym for File Transfer Protocol, it is used to transfer files between computers on a network, such as the internet. E.g.: you would use FTP to upload an image file or any other files for that matter to be used on your website, basically to move files from your PC to the host server.

Linux Web Hosting - website hosting which is built on the Linux operating system platform. It basically means that the website hosting accounts run on a server which is running the Linux operating system.

IP - stands for internet protocol and it's basically the language computers use to talk to each other on a network or the internet.
Shared Hosting - multiple websites existing on the same server, sharing resources. It's the most affordable form of web hosting.

SiteBuilder - allows you to build websites without the knowledge of HTML and many web hosts offer it as a package.

Subdomain - a domain that's part of the larger domain, www.lens.com would be your "root domain" and www.view.lens.com would be your sub domain.

Virtual Host - basically the same deal as Shared Hosting, multiple websites are hosted on a single server.

VPS (Virtual Private Server) - this would fit right in between shared hosting and dedicated server hosting. VPS offers increased server performance and privacy over shared hosting, but not in equal terms as the dedicated server.

Windows Hosting - You have your Windows hosting and Linux hosting, it's just the platform on which the host server is operating.

1 - Figure out what you want in a web host. For example, Is price the most important criteria in your decision making? Would you pay a little more for 24/7 telephone support? Basically, what is your price threshold vs. all other feature ratio?

2 - Make sure the host provides cPanel with Fantastico. cPanel will allow users to access file and website without involving the use of FTP. Setting up your own blog, gallery, or even forum will be a breeze if this setup is available. Fantastico is a must.

3 - Check for Sitebuilder, this would allow even the most tech-fearing individual to set up his or her own website. Think of it as a block by block site building method, you’ll have less control than coding from scratch but it beats the heck out of not having a website.

4 - Do a speed test on a host’s network, simply choose start > run > type in "command" enter, and then type "ping hostdomainname.com" give it a moment to finish and look for the average ping. If the average shows 100ms or more, it means your site will load slower. Any average below 80ms is acceptable, the lower the number the better.

5 - Search for top notch support, this could include live chat or telephone support or both. It should also be noted that some web site hosting providers will only offer email support to cut costs and offer inexpensive hosting rate. Many excellent web hosts answer emails around the clock and you can expect to get your answers in less than 6hours.

Seek out these qualities on your next web host and weigh in the price together. Use your common sense along with this guideline and you could easily land an inexpensive, yet reliable web hosting provider.

HostGator is one of world's 10 largest hosting companies and it currently hosts 1.8 million domains and counting. With over 200 employees, you can expect one of the best customer support in the industry.

Let’s look at the UNLIMITED features included in their most affordable hosting plan, the “Hatchling”.
At $4.95/month you get:

Disk Space – UNLIMITED

Bandwidth – UNLIMITED

Subdomains – UNLIMITED

FTP Accounts – UNLIMITED

MySQL Databases – UNLIMITED

POP3 Accounts – UNLIMITED

Plus you have 45days money back guarantee, which means if HostGator does not meet your standard.. You have a month and 15days to cancel and get your money back. There is absolutely no better guarantee in service and performance than that.

Note: 3yrs = $4.95/month, 2yrs = $5.95/month, 1yr = $6.95/month, monthly = $8.95.

Based on my experience, I would recommend "HostGator" for anyone looking for a reliable affordable web site hosting.

What I really like about HostGator is their customer support system. They provide 24/7 all year round Email Support, Live Chat Support, and 24/7 Telephone Support if you can believe it. I also like the fact that the CEO has his email open to all clients in case they need one-on-one support from the man in charge, I think that is awesome.

HostGator also offers sitebuilder for free and they also provide easy to understand in-depth sitebuilder tutorial.

There’s absolutely no cancellation fee and you may cancel at any time you wish. No hidden fees and no contract just add to the peace of mind.

HostGator Guarantees 99.9% uptime and I don’t need to explain to you why this is important. If your site isn't up 99.9% in any one month they issue a full refund for the month. You always want to work with hosting companies that make large investments in their datacenters and with Hostgator that’s exactly what you get.

This is just a small sample of support and services you can expect from HostGator. They have 1.8million happy domain owners to back up their guarantees.

My #1 Recommendation is HostGator, I feel that their support and service is absolutely the best in the industry.

Green Web Host providers are eco-friendly web hosting companies that power their servers with wind and solar energy sources. Most of these green web hosts offer both the eco-friendly hosting service as well as the traditional hosting which power their servers from the conventional non-renewable energy sources. Computer servers require lots energy to function and to make things worse, web hosting servers are on all year round. Many people assume Green = Expensive, but to their dismay they find out that Green Web Hosting are not expensive at all. In fact, there are many competitive Green Web Hosting offers out there. Signing up with one these companies is just another way to reduce your carbon footprint.