Features of Web Hosting Services

Having Online presence for your business is an exciting experience, since millions of people around the world will know about your services and access your articles, images and videos. But narrowing your search for a good web hosting provider is really an daunting task. You just need to find one that meets your needs in several areas. Here we have given some of the entry-level hosting features that can be found in most of the web hosting providers,

Key Features:

Disk Space:
Disk space is the amount of disk storage provided to you to store your website on the web server. Generally, it is ranging from 1,000 MB to 10 GB. The provided disk space is not only allocated for web pages alone but also count into the emails storage, archived web log files and database files. Due to the low hard disk price today, most of the web hosting service providers can afford to give out sizeable disk space for you. Unless you have a ‘big’ website with a lot of video, mp3 or picture files, otherwise 500MB – 800MB of disk space is adequate for most of the websites. Should you overuse your disk space in any case, you can always purchase extra storage.

Bandwidth:
Bandwidth or data transfer allocated by the web host is the amount of allowable data transfer per month for a website. When an online user visit your website, your web page will be transferred from the web server to the user’s web browser. Higher the number of visitors you have, the more data will be transferred from the web server. Obviously, high traffic website will be in need of very high bandwidth requirements. On average, bandwidth offered by web hosting providers can range from 20 GB to 300 GB per month. How much bandwidth you need will based on the size of your web pages and the traffic to your website. If your website overuse the bandwidth, you website might be being shut down or alternatively you will be charged additional fees for the extra bandwidth that you have used.

Host Add-on Domains:
When you sign up a hosting account, most of the web hosting services will let you to host only one website per hosting account. Later most of the web hosting services are offering multiple domain hosting where you can host multiple domains or Add on Domains in a single web hosting account.

Password Protected Directory:
By password protecting specified directories, web users are prevented from gaining access to directories selected unless they have an assigned user ID and password. Usually, getting a directory to be protected can be achieved easily within the Control Panel. However, some of the web hosting providers require you to go down to low level configuration to get your directory password protected, this include creating and modifying “.htaccess” and “.htpasswd” files.

Control Panels:
Control panels are a popular tool to help you to manage your web account details like create and protect specific directories, manage sub domains, create and delete email accounts, access site statistics, access or configure log files and add numerous optional functions onto your website. The control panels features may vary from web hosting providers because different control panels software packages are used.

Website Statistic:
Whenever the visitors visit your website, all their browsing activities will be tracked inside a server log file. It is very difficult to interpret and analyze such vast number of low level log records. Therefore, most of the web hosting service providers offer website statistic analysis tool. Some of the most common packages has Webalizer, AWStats, FastStats, HitList and WebTrends.

FTP Features:
Usually, you create your website on your personal computer. When you are done, you need to upload these HTML files, images and so forth to your web server using FTP (File Transfer Protocol) software. Some popular FTP program include CuteFTP and WS-FTP. The web hosting providers will provide a user ID and password to you for accessing your FTP account. If they support ‘Multiple FTP Accounts’, you can able to setup multiple ftp access accounts as you wish for other users. Normally, one FTP accounts is more than enough unless you have more than one person managing your website.

Email Features:
Usually for every web hosting account that you sign up, range from 400 to unlimited number of email accounts will be provided with your unique website domain name in it, for example(Your name@your-website.com).

It is very important to choose a host who provides 24 hour customer service, in case anything goes wrong when uploading your site. You never know when you might need help.