If you are planning to build a small personal website or big communtiy website you need a hosting account. But these two sites wont fit with a single hosting type.

Generally if you search for a hosting provider you will find different plans starting from $1 per month to $100 per month or even more, single service with different prices.Then

Which Hosting service should i buy?

A big question for a person who is going to start a new website and the answer is also not so simple it involves lots of technical things in it to choose the best one.

But i dont want to confuse you with many technical things i will give a brief introduction to different factors which effect the price of the hosting.

There are different types of web hosting services available in market

Shared hosting: This is most common hosting used by number of websites. In this type you will get a share a single server hardware resources with others clients. In this type the software maintaince and upgradation is maintained by the hosting provider only. You don’t have the control over the server but you have full control over your website using some control panel softwares like cPanel or Plex. There are many more factors which decide the price of your shared hosting which is explained in detailes below.

Usefull for Small and Medium Sites and Email domains, Can be used as backup server for your data or main server

Virtual private server hosting: This is same like a shared hosting but acts like a Dedicated Host, you have control over the server also.

Usefull for Websites which needs complete control over server and its resources, To run web applications without adversely affecting other clients or not affected by other clients

Dedicated Hosting: This is just like taking a computer for lease, you don`t share any resources with any one. This is mainly useful for large web applications with heavy traffic. This hosting server needs some person with knowledge on OS and Remote day to day maintaince of servers. It takes some time to setup also contains setup fee.

Managed Web Hosting: This is just like a dedicated server but it also provides additional functionalities like reporting and monitoring, load balancing, security, setup, system administration and software updates. Which reduces your server maintainces charge.

Server Co-Location: This is nothing but building your own server and placing it in the data center of a provider. This requires most efficient persons to maintain your server.

Any Hosting service again have different prices depending upon the following factors

1. Hosting Space: This is the space provided for you to place your website. Normally this space ranges from 1GB or less to 1TB or more…

For a normal website 1GB is more than enough as we can store more thousands of pages in 1GB.

Sites containing more photos or videos want to go for more space. Now a days space is not so costly and it wont effect much on the final price.

2. Contract period: Many Hosting providers will give you a option to buy for 6 months to 5 years. If you buy for more period the cost decreases. But if you are choosing the new service provider dont go for too long contracts as it may be problem if the support is not so good.

3. OS Type: Mainly you have two OS options one is linux hosting and second one is windows hosting. As windows is not a free OS obviously a server with windows will cost little bit more than linux. For hosting .NET applications it is mandatory to go for windows hosting, Others can choose linux hosting, you dont need much technical knowledge on linux to run a website on linux as it is maintained by your service provider.

4. Monthly Bandwidth: This is major thing which many people ignore to consider and which will add unforseen costs to your budget. . Many Service providers restrict your monthly data transfer. Some providers will charge you extra as you crossed the limit and some will block your site. Be careful before choosing this to avoid add unforeseen costs to your budget.

Some hosting providers will give you 10GB of space but only 30GB of monthly bandwidth which will make your web space useless

5. Database Support: You need a database when you are going for a dynamic website with programming, if your are going with a static designer based website you just skip this.

Many service providers will provide MySQL database as it is free and stable. But they limit the number of allowed databases. So check with your developer with this issues.

If you want MSSQL or ORACLE database servers then you want spend some more dollars to get it.

6. Sub-Domains: subdomain is a domain that is part of a larger domain. Ex: mail.google.com

Some providers will restrict the number of subdomains you can create but this is not a major thing to consider as most provider will provide more than 10, which is more than enough.

Note: Remember sub-domain is differ from addon domain addon domain will give you a chance to host different websites in a single hosting service and share the available resources.

7. Softwares Installed: This is also a crucial thing to consider before choosing a hosting server because if you are going for a shared hosting you cant install softwares after you brought the hosting account so check once again whether all the required softwares are installed with you service provider. This may effect your cost.

So i think now you can choose a better hosting service provider by analysing the above factors please give comments on different hosting providers so that it is usefull for other in choosing the best hosting in no time.