Picking the right Web host isn’t an exact science but its a tough job. Your decision relies largely upon what you plan to do with your site, how much time and expertise you have available to devote to it, and what you can afford to pay. Here are the basic types of users and the kinds of hosts that are right for each.
User types.
- Solo operator
- Small business
- Online store
- Medium-size business
- Big enterprise
Solo Operator
If all you want from your Web site is a place to post pictures of you and your friends or announce your presence to the world, there are plenty of low-cost options. Armed with little or some HTML skills and a few Web tools, newbies should start with an account at a site such as Yahoo GeoCities or Atspace. Both hosts provide free hosting, as well as modest amounts of storage, bandwidth and sub domain name. Among Pakistani hosts there are many such as Nexus, their 12$ basic plan comes with a Domain name, 15 MB Hosting, with 5 GB transfer per month (Unix), unlimited e-mail address and with webmail access.
Small Business
If you run a small business, you need to hang your shingle on the Web. But don’t let running the site turn into a full-time job. While thousands of small businesses use shared hosting services. A shared host is generally a better bet. You’ll be able to give your site a more customized look, though you’ll have to design it yourself or pay extra to have a host do it for you, and you’ll have more room to grow as site traffic increases or you add employees and e-mail accounts. Prices are extremely competitive; you can get a fully functional site for less than 9$ to 2$ per month. But you’ll also be sharing one machine with potentially hundreds of other sites, so if sites on your shared server get hacked or blocked for spamming, your site could be shut down for a time.
Key Features
- Personalized domain names: Having your own domain (www.yourowndomain.com) marks you as a serious business and one that’s more likely to stick around.
- E-mail and Web marketing tools: Want customers to find you in search engines or keep in touch with clients? Some hosts offer tools that let you do both.
- Site design services: Templates are too limited at this level, and your expertise may not be in Web design.
Online Store
It’s one thing to advertise your wares on the Net and quite another to sell them. If you want to conduct transactions and collect money, your needs go up. Here, the kind of hosting package you pick depends highly on whether you’re selling 20 items or 2,000 and whether you expect 10 customers or 10,000. A low-volume shop could get away with a Yahoo storefront that accepts PayPal payments, but serious stores will want a host that offers a full e-commerce package with all the trimmings: a shopping cart; security certificates; an online catalog tool; payment gateways for accepting credit cards; and ways to drive traffic to your shop, such as advertisements, search engine placement, e-mail newsletters, and so on. You’ll also want a host that can integrate these tools with your back-office accounting and inventory-management apps. And you’ll want rock-solid security and uptime guarantees; if your store is hacked or goes down, you lose money.
Key Features
- Web advertising and marketing services: Advertisements, search engine placement, and e-mail newsletters.
- Server redundancy and regular backup: You’ll want your product lists to be regularly updated (hourly, if you have a busy or complex shop), and you’ll need multiple copies in different locations. That way if there’s, say, a major power failure in the Northeast, other shoppers can get to your servers in the Southwest.
Medium Size Buiness
With a midsize business, a robust Web site is de rigueur. But the kind of hosting resources you need depends more on what you want the site to do than the size of your company. A large informational, or brochureware, site that doesn’t change often has lower bandwidth and storage needs than a smaller site that conducts transactions, creates dynamic Web pages, or delivers streaming-media files. For online brochures, a moderately priced, shared-hosting account may be more than adequate. Heavily interactive sites, such as those that serve up audio and video files or those that need to run their own apps, might opt for a virtual private server, a shared host that splits one machine between a handful of customers, or a dedicated server that’s theirs alone. Again, the staples here are security and reliability–the host must provide uptime guarantees, built-in redundancy, and superior tech support.
Key Features
- Robust security: Having your site hacked or taken down by a worm can be a nightmare for any business, so ask about the host’s firewall, antivirus, intruder detection, and other security services.
- Service-level agreements with uptime guarantees: At this level, you’ll want an SLA (service loan agreement) that spells out the uptime that the host will guarantee, as well as how the host will compensate you if that agreement isn’t met.
Big Enterprise
Large organizations are complex enterprises, so it’s no surprise their hosting needs can be complicated as well. Traffic and e-mail volume alone may dictate the need for a dedicated hosting solution. In fact, most big enterprises will engage several servers–some for delivering Web pages, others for handling e-mail and database calls. The question for many is what kind of dedicated service. Businesses with large IT staffs that need more control over their Web sites generally opt for unmanaged or self-managed dedicated servers, where the hosting company provides the hardware but it’s up to the customer to load apps and keep the site running. Firms that want to outsource their entire Web operation can go for a managed dedicated host; these are pricier, but they may also offer site development and design services. Companies that have their own hardware and staff but need a place to put them can seek out a colocation provider, which will rent them rack space in a secure, bandwidth-rich facility.
Key Features
- State-of-the-art virus protection, a firewall, and intrusion detection.
- Offsite data storage and backup.
- Secure facilities: Besides network security, you also want to make sure the company controls the personnel who can access your machines on the inside. This may include biometric scanners on the doors of the server cages, if necessary.
Posted by Aqeel Syed 
Posted by Aqeel Syed 
Posted by Aqeel Syed 
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