HOW MUCH WILL IT COST?

Cost is an important factor in decision-making at all levels of business. Web-hosting costs can range from just a few US dollars per month for a few basic features, to as much as several hundred dollars for features and inclusions that the typical site will not need anyway. While there are many low cost hosting options available, be careful if a package sounds too good to be true - it probably is. Read the fine print carefully to ensure that this deal has not excluded features that would be standard if you were to pay just a few more dollars per month.

HOW MUCH SPACE WILL YOU GET?

No matter what type of website you have, space allocation usually affects the overall cost of your web-hosting package. More space will obviously mean a higher cost, thus you should only seek to get enough space to meet your immediate needs, and plan for increasing this allocation over time if the need arises. Space needs usually vary depending on factors such as the number of pages and pictures on the site and whether you need video clips and sound files. However, a very basic website should need no more than five megabytes (mb) of storage space.

HOW RELIABLE IS THE SERVICE THAT IS BEING OFFERED?

A certain percentage of guaranteed 'uptime' is something that most good web-hosting companies will offer you. 99.5 per cent uptime basically means that your site will be up and running 99.5 per cent of the time. There are the rare occasions when your site might be down for a few minutes for maintenance or tweaking but if it's down or experiencing 'technical difficulties' too regularly, you should really be looking elsewhere for hosting.

HOW WIDE IS THE HOST COMPANY'S 'PIPELINE'?

The 'pipeline' basically describes the hosting company's means of access to the Internet. The wider the 'pipeline', the faster their connection to the Internet, which means the faster your site will load (appear) for a surfer if you were to host there. T3, T1 and ISDN connections (in that order) are the pipelines that you should look to when choosing a host.

ARE THERE 'HIDDEN' COSTS?

Be careful of web hosting companies that charge you a specific rate for a package, and then tack on additional charges for bandwidth excesses and certain additional features. Always read the fine print very carefully in order to identify additional costs that may be applicable based on the package that you end up choosing.

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