One of the greatest problems in the web hosting industry arises from the competitive nature of the business. Over the years, web host companies have started to offer outrageous amounts of bandwidth and space that cannot be justified by the low price that they charge. Remember! If something seems to good to be true, 9 out of 10 times it is. The internet is littered with thousands of web hosts that oversell their services, frequently claiming to offer unlimited bandwidth and/or unlimited space.

What is overselling? Overselling occurs when a company with FIXED resources offers more than it can immediately supply to its customers in hope that each customer will not take full advantage of their purchase. In terms of web hosting, a company may offer each customer 500GB of storage space when it only really has 1000GB hard drive to share among 20 clients (sometimes a lot more!). Common sense goes a long way when researching for the right host, and it is wise to stay away from companies that offer an exorbitant amount of bandwidth or space.

Another important piece of information that most people usually refuse to look at is the Terms of Service (TOS) and the Acceptable User Policy (AUP) that a web host operates under. Most of us are used to simply clicking “I agree” whenever faced with a long list of legal ramblings over the web, but when choosing a web host it is very important to glance over these two documents. Many times, clever web hosts (the equivalent of a modern day “greasy salesperson”) will include within their legal documents specific restrictions on what you may use your hosting account for. Over the years, I have seen several that are quite outlandish.

For example, I once found a company offering unlimited web space and unlimited bandwidth that placed heavy restrictions on what its customers could host. Specifically, it stated that customers could not host large audio or video files, and that the server could not be used as any type of file or image host for the general public. After reading this I asked myself: How the heck am I supposed to utilize the “unlimited space” that I am rightfully paying for, if I cannot host any files over 10mb? Apparently, I could only upload HTML and PHP files that would hardly take up 100mb even if I purposely tried to make them bloated! Ridiculous.

The overall point of this article is simply that you should be cautious before buying web hosting from an internet company offering too much than it can handle. Unlimited services have a terrible track record in the web hosting industry, and if you stay away from them you will end up much happier then those who have suffered through a horrendous experience with one of these web hosts (like me!).

Many people who are new to the web often naively believe that the tricks used by bad companies in the physical world are not used by web host companies. When you take a quick look, many web hosts seem to provide similar services, but if you read more carefully you will see that they do not. Most web hosting companies have comparable hosting packages because they want to stay competitive, but if you take a sheet of paper and then write down what each company offers you may see some surprising differences.

The phrase, “You get what you pay for”, is especially true in the case of web hosting. There are thousands of companies that offer free hosting. That may sound great (it is for those who are just beginning), but this service should not be used by people who are serious about having a site. They don’t guarantee any percentage of uptime. For any serious webmaster you want a company that can promise an uptime of 95 percent or better.

You also should make a list of what you are looking for in a hosting company. How much disk space you are looking for and how much bandwidth you need. If you have a site that is gaining in popularity or you are hosting videos/games, then you will want a hosting company that can provide you with substantial bandwidth. Also, you would want a company that can accommodate you with server upgrades when/if you need them. When you are shopping for web hosting companies, don’t choose the first one you see because you think they are cheap or may suit your needs at the moment. Think about the future of your site and how much you think your site will grow!

If you are looking for a web hosting company and are pretty new to the internet game, we can help you understand some of the terminology that you are seeing on these hosting sites. Being a webmaster and having hosting is a lot to take in but once you understand the terms, things become easier to understand. Here are four main terms that you should know.

Server Type: There are many different types of servers involved in web hosting. The type of server software that the server is running can be Windows, Linux, or sometimes Unix . For those who have a basic website or webpage the server type is no problem for you. But if you have hundreds of pages on your site then you will need more data base functions and more dynamic pages. Most people tend to stick with Linux as it has full support for PHP, the most common dynamic scripting language on the internet. Most of the popular applications you would want to use, such as the Wordpress blogging platform, run on PHP. Thus, you would need a Linux powered server.

Disk Space: This is the amount of space that is available to you on your server. You store the information from the website on the server hard drive. If you don’t plan on hosting large files such as mp3s or videos, disk space shouldn’t matter for you. Just stay away from hosts that offer “unlimited” disk space! They are lying.

Bandwidth: The value you see for bandwidth in a hosting plan is for a monthly basis. Bandwidth is a unit of measure based on how many megabytes (or gigabytes) are downloaded from your website. When someone visits your site, their computer must download all of the .HTML files and images associated with the website. The magnitude of this download is what is known as the bandwidth. For most people, .HTML files takes up very little bandwidth. You only need lots of bandwidth if you are a very high traffic site or are hosting large files for download (50 mb+).

Email Accounts: Certain hosting plans only allow a certain amount of email accounts to be placed on the server. If you need more, some companies will offer more for an additional price.

These are just 4 key terms that you need to understand. There are so many more aspects to web hosting, but by understanding the basics, the rest will flow much more easily.

So you are new to being a webmaster, and have a site built and ready to go. All you need now is hosting! But you don’t really know what you should be doing to find the perfect company. Here are four steps to follow in selecting a hosting company.

Step 1. Only read up on the hosting plans that suit your needs. There is no reason to look at companies that cannot accommodate your website needs. If you log onto a site and see that a company is offering too many complicated features, you may want to skip to the next one. You will save a lot of valuable time.

Step 2. Make sure you review hosting plans in detail. There are so many different web hosting companies. Start by looking for user submitted testimonials at websites such as WebHostingJury.com. Make a categorized list of the companies that offer plans that fit your needs and then weed out the companies that have a bad track record. Then, if you still feel that you haven’t found a proper web host, you can continue looking for other companies.

Step 3. Ask for quotes from these companies. If you like what you see on a web hosting company’s website then call them on the phone and explain to them exactly what you need and they will be more than happy to provide you with a quote. After you get all the quotes you can read them over and compare all the quotes together. If they don’t have a phone number, I strongly suggest you stay away from them! You don’t want to get stuck with a company that may vanish in a week.

Step 4. Use common sense. There are four things that are important to look for in a good hosting company. Price, Reliability, Uptime, and Customer Support. If any company is lacking in any of these three areas, look again.

There are three price levels of web hosting: free, less expensive and expensive. However, at the same time there are many different types of hosting. The first type of hosting is free hosting, this type of hosting is very limited because of the fact that it is free. Furthermore, you usually will not be able to get all of the features you want such as mySQL and PHP without paying. Also, since you are not paying anything, you have no uptime guarantee and your website may go down without notice. You should never use free web hosting services for a serious website!

Shared Web Hosting: This type of hosting is used when the hosting company places your site on a server with other people. Mostly, sites that are similar in topic are grouped together. This service is less expensive because it is shared. Unless you are running a very intensive and highly trafficked website, shared web hosting will be fine.

Reseller Web Hosting: This style of web hosting allows the customer to resell web hosting through the company’s server. The reseller can put up individual domains and they can also offer other types of hosting as well. The accounts can be very large and range from the dedicated server to the co-location server. This is a great way to start a small web hosting service.

Virtual Private Server (VPS): This is a server that has the user feeling like they have their own server but in reality they are sharing a server, it is like paying for virtual space. VPS servers give you the power of a dedicated server without the complicated hassle of a dedicated server.

Dedicated Hosting Service: The user who chooses this type of hosting is paying for their own server. You are renting the server, but not owning it. You have complete access to the server at any time of the night and day and you are responsible for security and maintenance. Dedicated servers are recommended for advanced users only!

Managed Dedicated Hosting Service: This type of hosting is the same as a dedicated service except the hosting company will help secure and maintain the server. Since the hosting company must maintain the server, managed services are more expensive that regular dedicated boxes.

Web hosting is an internet service that lets people who have websites have access to the internet through the World Wide Web. The companies that provide such services allow customers to use space on a server they own and rent out for a low monthly price. These servers are either on site or stored at a different location, these servers are called co-location. There are many different scopes when it comes to web hosting.

The initial hosting is just a basic web page and a very limited scale of file hosting. The files can be uploaded through FTP or File Transfer Protocol. There are single page hosting which are simply for web pages. Then there are multi page hosting, in which websites are many pages and need a server to become active. There are many different types of hosting. There is free web hosting, shared web hosting, reseller web hosting, virtual dedicated server, dedicated hosting service, manages hosting service and co-location web hosting services.

It is very easy to get web hosting, the first thing you need to do is decide what you need. How much you want to spend is also a key factor in choosing a web hosting company. Log on to the web and type in web hosting in your search box, it will bring you millions of results. You can start there or try using a web directory! Read what the companies that interest you are offering and make a list comparing each of them when you are done with your research. Choose the company that meets your needs and then call them and sign up. It is that easy. Oh yeah, don’t forget to check if the host company has a coupon code! =)

If you are new to the web, your web host can help you set up your first website. Customer service with hosting companies should be able to help you with every aspect of your hosting.