Choosing a tariff plan

Tariff plans typically vary the size of disk space, number of sub domains, restriction on outgoing traffic. Of course, once you've selected a few of the most reputable hosting companies, you should compare their tariff plans.

Comparing you should keep in mind the requirements the tariff plan should meet. It is necessary to take into account:

the size of the given disc space;

possibility to have a lot of email addresses;

installing and running applications (cgi, php, MySQL);

access to the website using FTP;

the administrative panel that helps to monitor and manage the website (the administrative panel, where all the functions handy "sort through" will save you a lot of time);

the quantity of paid outbound traffic.

If your first website will contain several pages and the logo, tariff plan, where the amount of disk space will be from 100 to 300 megabytes is appropriate. It is more than enough. There is no hosting provider who offers less than 100 megabytes of disk space.

What about email addresses? Almost all the providers provide unlimited number of addresses within one domain. only the number of individual POP3 and SMTP accounts could be restricted. This means that, despite of different addresses, you will have limited number of individual connections using a mail program.

Installation and running of the script is needed if the website will be built on dynamic pages, or whether it is necessary to implement a search function within the site. If the website will be completely built on the statistic html-pages, the running of the script will have secondary importance.

It is necessary to have access to the website via FTP. It is difficult to do without it. FTP access could be provided by any hosting provider.

It seems that administrative panel does not have a high value. But in practice it turns to be irreplaceable while website support. With the administrator panel, you can not just set preferences, but also obtain statistics about the site, such as: used/free disk space, the outgoing traffic for this month (as a rule, all ISPs set a limit on outgoing traffic). You should not rely on the companies that offer "unlimited" tariff plan (that sort of companies tries to lure customers) With the help of administrator panel it is easy to operate with the site settings and e-mail: create a new mailing address to set up mail forwarding, manage folders and files (to establish the right of access to files, passwords to the directories).

Prepaid outgoing traffic is also very important. If you do not control the quantity of information is in kilobytes will be sent from your site to the users' computers, you may need to pay a hosting provider for excess of the limit on outgoing traffic. It is easy to calculate the average of outgoing traffic. Calculate the volume of the average page, including graphical elements placed on it. Remember: while repeated downloading of the pages, that use previously uploaded image, it will be taken not from your site, but from the cache of the user's computer. Now predict the average number of pages the user could view and predict average number of users per day. Now multiply the volume of the page by the number of pages and the number of users per day. As a result, you will get the approximate amount of outgoing traffic per day. After that multiply the result by 30 days and you will get the approximate volume of traffic per month.

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Eazzy Mintzberg is a web marketer for EasyHosting.com - Affordable Web Hosting and Domain Name Registration provider.