Is 300 too much to pay for web hosting?

Yes, it depends on it. When I read through the rest of the email that raised the question, I noticed that the potential web host mentioned other things that he would include for that price. I saw the phrases that created animations and edited photo images. It is both clear design activities that have nothing to do with hosting.

Furthermore, I saw the mention of autoresponders, mailing list programs, and use of a domain name. None of these are host activities. You may need them, but you may not.

So the first question you really need to ask yourself is what is the purpose of your website?

It is the key to determining what type of web hosting and related features you need.

Lets start by talking about a domain name. Its the name that you will be familiar with, the one that people will enter into the browser so that they can see your site. Example.com is a domain name.

In order to have a domain name and be able to use it for your website, you must purchase it. It must be a unique name that is not already used. You purchase the right to use a particular domain name by registering it with a company known as a registrar.

You can find many of these companies on the Internet and the fee for one years registration can be as little as nine or ten dollars. You do not need to buy web hosting at the same time or from the same company you choose as your registrar. In fact, I recommend that you use separate providers for these two services. It makes it much easier to change web hosting at a later date if the same company is not your registrar.

For the price of registration fee, many companies include free parking which means they put up a webpage for your visitors to see when building your real page and forwarding of email.

Even if you do not think you ever need or want a website, you can get a professional looking email address just by registering your domain name. Its a pretty good deal for ten dollars.

Now we are talking about web hosting. You probably do not have the hardware needed to host your own website, not to mention time and technical expertise. That is why most people pay a web host to do the job.

The files and pictures that you create or have created for you that make up your website, live physically on computers web servers owned and operated by your web host. They retain the hardware and other infrastructure, back up your files but you should also, if thats the case and provide technical support for you to help keep your website.

They can also offer other services like autoresponders, mailing lists, blogs, content management systems and shopping carts, to name a few. To keep this article too far, I will save discussion about these additional services for another article.

How are you evaluating a potential web host?

Check out their performance statistics at uptime.netcraft.comperfreportsHosters. Keep in mind that you spend time on a forum like to see what others are saying.

And try Googling the name of the company followed by the word complaint to see what others think.

Performance and technical support are the most important features to look for in a hosting company.

If performance stinks and your site is down 20% of the time, it does not matter what features are likely to be provided. When the site is down, you do not have any features available.

Technical support is critical. Look for live support not email support that takes several days. Most hosting companies provide a free trial period. Take advantage of this time and be sure to call technical support at least several times. See what the response time is. And see if there are any language barriers. Whether does not matter how competent technical support staff is if you can not understand what they say.

If you need help with designing and designing your website, I strongly recommend that you consider it a completely separate activity from web hosting. Many designers make extra money by selling or selling hosting services. Often times that take you out of the loop, and any problems you must have have to go through the designer to be worked out.