Comparing Hosting Plans

If you are searching for website hosting you will quickly realize there are more plans and hosting companies that anyone could ever sift through in a lifetime. All say they are the best and have the best plans. So how do you know what you need and who is right for you.

The first thing w need to look at is what you actually understand. Do you know what bandwidth is? Do you know if 20GB of data transfer is enough? Do you know how to install PHP programs or set up SQL databases?

My guess is that you don't or you would not have to read this article for help.

Rather than discussing bandwidth, hard drive space and performance lets talk about the end result of your website. Do you want to sell? Do you want to market affiliate products or run a blog type content site?

If you don't know what 500MB of disk space is or how many pages can be delivered with 5GB of bandwidth then you likely wont have the skills to use programs like dreamweaver, frontpage, photoshop, FTP utilities for uploading or how to manage HTML files and graphic files and get the website to work.

That makes the decision very easy. You need something more than just website hosting, you need a content management system that you can understand, you need a way to sell or add programs like a shopping cart and you need a website that wont shut down because you used it too much or had too many visitors.

One of the things you will want is a friendly voice at the other end of a phone line that can help you when you get stuck. I don't doubt that the average person can learn how to modify HTML, but why spend hours learning to add one line to a page when you have more important issues with your business.

There are few systems as easy to use as pageBuzz and the ability to manage content without getting a masters degree in Information Technology.

Systems like Yahoo offer a downloadable site builder that helps with the task and works very well for the above average user. But most people have no experience building pages and have no idea what the difference is between downloading and uploading or how to resize pictures from camera print size to a web size.

You should always stick with a brand name. A company that has reasonable technology and support base that can meet your business needs. Avoid resellers or companies that depend on larger companies for their technology or hardware. If a server breaks, your host would have to e-mail their host and hope it gets fixed. Make sure you have access to the people that actually have their hands on the web servers.

One thing you don't want is anyone offering UNLIMITED Plans. These companies offer unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space, unlimited websites and unlimited resources to unlimited people on the same server. They slow down use by dropping connections and making resources unavailable for more than a few seconds. Programs will shut down if they run too long, pages will be removed if another client needs more space and performance is poor and undependable.

Sure these discount mega hosting plans are cheap and massive in what they offer. But if you plan to use your website to earn money, they are not for you. If you just need a home page or would like to upload a huge volume of video files and don't care that the site will be slow at peak traffic times, then these discount plans are great.

Every plan has its value. We could never offer anyone 1TB of disk space for $20 a month. It is just insane when we run 15,000 RPM SCSI drives with under 200GB of space that cost up to $1000.00 each and we run arrays of drives in RAID 5 configuration for redundancy. For our servers to reach 1TB of space we would need to spend $10,000 just on the hard drives and we could never sell that for $20 a month. So we offer much less space but much higher performance.

Our clients need their website accessible every time one of their customers trys to view it. They value performance and support. They want to be able to login and access their sales invoices and ship their products. They want to know that if they have a problem, they can call and get it resolved now. While the mega hosting plans offer a 3 day response time on server issues which is not acceptable in a business environment.

There are countless pages and articles online that discuss the downside of the discount hosting plans and they have become a joke within the industry as far as what they actually provide. But still, millions of people use them, because that suit their need.

We offer our clients 1 website for $20. They offer unlimited websites and unlimited space for $10. You don't have to be a brain surgeon to see they are going to get more business than we will.

But they do not offer their own technology or easy to use shopping systems and the support our little home based company can offer the small business with no computer experience.

Recently, even Yahoo added an unlimited plan. Then their TOS redefines the word "unlimited" as being what they decide is appropriate for your business. Since when do they know what your business should or should not do, sell or have on its website?

Rather than telling people they can have unlimited space, they should offer people realistic plans that make sense. After all, the customers are just trying to make sense out of their hosting plans.

If you need a hosting plan, make sure you get a plan that gives you what you need. If you need cheap bandwidth and space, any of the discount giants will serve you just fine. They all have comparable services and all have dependable equipment. Performance is always dependant on the other people on the server, so you could get luck and get on a server with no traffic or you could get stuck on a busy server and be very unhappy. Its hit and miss.

Companies like Yahoo have much better technology and can manage loads more effectively so performance is not as much of an issue. But using their tools can be a bit much for inexperienced users.

If you need something you can manage, update and expect it to be accessible by all of your customers then try a system like pageBuzz that sells you a working website rather than a website hosting plan.