Things to know before purchasing a web hosting plan for your blog or website

If you don’t have much knowledge about web hosting and going to start a new website , then it will be quite difficult for you . For example , Suppose If you had planned to provide certain features & facilities in your website, then it may require various other supportive features & technology in web hosting plan. Which should be provided with your web hosting plan. Hence please once go through all the below mentioned web hosting features and specifications.

1. How much hosting space should you purchase – This is the first question which comes in your mind , so first of all decide how big your online business model is going to be , how much picture , text , videos you are going to put on your website. How much visitors you are targeting on your website in future . for example if you are planning to start a small website , or blog which contains up to 100 pages , 100 images and 10 medium quality videos . Then 10 GB of hosting space on shared hosting server is enough . But if you are planning to start a big business , which contains more than 1000 web pages , more than 10000 images & more than 100 videos , then you need to buy a dedicated hosting server for your website.

         What is the difference between shared hosting and dedicated hosting ?

         Shared hosting plans means – The hosting company will provide you the specified amount of space on its such a hosting server whose remaining space is shared & sold for various other websites.

         Dedicated hosting plans means – The hosting company will provide one complete server for your website , other websites will be hosted on that server.

1. Linux hosting or windows hosting. which should you prefer – As we all know that Linux operating system is mostly preferred for networking & web hosting services because of its enhanced security feature than windows operating system.

                        But let me tell you that there are several website CMS software’s whose requirement is windows hosting server , They may not be installed on Linux hosting server .hence I will suggest you to check & confirm your website CMS software requirements, before purchasing any web hosting plan.

1. Maximum monthly data transfer bandwidth allowed from server – Always purchase web hosting plans which allows – UNLIMITED BANDWIDTH . Because if you purchase hosting plan with limited monthly bandwidth , and once your website crosses the maximum allowed  bandwidth in any month . your website can not be accessed for that month. In more layman’s term take an example –  suppose if your website total content size on server disk is – 1 MB , and if you purchase a hosting plan which allows maximum 1 GB( i.e 1024 MB)  Bandwidth,  if your complete website is viewed by 1024 people in only 10 days, then total data transfer from the server will be 1 MB X 1024 = 1GB(i.e 1024MB) , Hence after 10 days , your hosting plan will not allow anyone to access you website till the end of that month. Hence if your website traffic is high & progressive , then always choose unlimited monthly bandwidth plan. But if you have only 5 to 10 text content based website and you know that your visitors are limited .then only you can purchase limited bandwidth plan.

1. How many databases & type of database free with your hosting plan – This is one of the most important thing to enquire that what type of databases( Mysql or any other database) are provided with your hosting plan , and also  enquire about number of free data base you will get with the hosting plan.  Because if you had decided to use any content management system on your website  like – wordpress , druple , etc , or either ecommerce software’s like magento commerce, oscommerce , or perestashop etc.  then it can only be installed on your hosting plan if your hosting contains at  mysql database , if  you are planning to use different CMS software’s for your sub domain , hence each cms software will require 1 mysql database from your hosting plan.

1. How many free Email accounts @ your domain name is provided with your hosting plan – always Enquire about number of free email @ your domain name comes with your hosting plan. Also check whether the email plans which your hosting company is providing is either Email forwarding plan or Complete email plan , because if it provide email forwarding plan then you will only be able to receive emails in your forwarded email id and also you will not be able to compose email with forwarding plan.

1. SSL Certification – You need to pay extra to your web hosting provider to get SSL security on your website . SSL Certificate provides extra security on your website and protect your visitor / customer data by encrypting the data. particularly if you are allowing online payments from credit card or debit card on your website , then in order to protect the customers transaction data from hackers , it is highly recommended to get your site SSL Verified.

1. One click installation facility of various important software from your hosting control panel – if your hosting provider do not allow 1 click installation of software’s from hosting control panel  , then in order to install those softwares , you need to upload those software in your hosting space by filezila or any other ftp client , then manually install & configuration of several permissions , which is a headache and much time consuming . but as of now several hosting companies provide 1 click installation of any cms software’s from hosting control panel which takes even less than a minute to install , without any expertise . Hence always check your hosting provider that whether it provide 1 click installation of various cms software’s or not .

1. Renewals & support – always check the hosting renewal rates for your hosting plan , and also enquire about the quality of support service provided by that web hosting company.