Introduction to web hosting features
There are thousands of web hosting companies around the world, and due to the huge amount of competition many of them are expanding the features they offer you in order to get your business. While this is great for web site owners, how do you know which features you want, which features you actually need, and which ones to look for? Are some of them too good to be true? Let our overview answer a few questions about the main features needed for new website owners.
In evaluating the most important and most common features offered by hosting companies, we have tried to consider how many of these features apply to the average beginning website owner, their usual beginning needs and probability of use. To help you in considering which features are the most important to think about for your hosting, we have rated each area as follows:
5: Extremely important
4: Very important
3: Moderately important
2: Somewhat important
1: Not important
One of the main things you need to consider is your hosting space. This is basically a measure of how much storage you need for your files. Like your home PC hard drive that holds a certain amount of files and programs, your hosting space will limit you to a certain amount of storage in most cases. Many hosts are now offering unlimited storage for your website, howver this is possible because most websites will not use a large amount of space anyway, so it becomes a good selling point for the hosting company. Just make sure that you know the file size of your website when it's finished and select enough storage to hold the files and take into account future growth.
Importance: 5
Along with storage, this is one of the most influential factors in a list of features. Bandwidth is the measure of data transfer between your site and your visitors; files are data, and are transferred from your site to their computer, which is where your bandwidth is measured. Much like a cell phone plan thats allows you "X" amount of minutes per month, bandwidth is offered in "X" amount of data transfer per month. And like cell phone plans, going over your bandwidth will cost you extra. Like storage, many hosts are now offering unlimited bandwidth as a feature.
Importance: 5
Many hosts want your business, and offering free domain names has become popular. Under these deals, when you start a hosting account, the hosting company will register the domain name you want and cover the registration fees for you. When unlimited domains are offered, this means that you can literally set up as many websites as you want in your server space, however you are still limited to the storage and bandwidth of your hosting account. Parked domains are basically domains that are registered yet don't have a website set up, but can be used to point to existing sites. Add on domains are basically having multiple websites within your hosting service. For the average website owner using one domain and website, these may not be factors in your decision.
Importance: 3
We mentioned site builders in another area as a feature many hosts offer. While many people won't need them, they are handy for those wanting to build sites without learning code. These programs are already installed in your account when it is set up and required no download or set up on your part.
Importance: 2
Another feature that has become popular is unlimited email addresses, and different ways to access and handle your website email. Unless you have an extremely large website with a lot of people requiring email addresses, or need fancier features for your email, this may be a factor you won't need to worry about. For the average web site owner, only a few email address and accounts are going to be needed.
Importance: 3
FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol a method of moving files from one location to another. This is generally used for site owners and developers to send files from their PC to their their hosting account. Separate FTP accounts can be set up to control who can upload files to your account, and what areas they have access to.
Importance: 3
Databases are primarily required for sites using dynamic languages, and needing a way to store data than may be updated, deleted or manipulated within the site, for example ecommerce sites, bulletin board sites, or membership sites. The language your site is written in may determine the database type needed to work properly.
Importance: 4
Your Control Panel and account administration areas are critical in not only managing your hosting account, but your websites various hosting features. Your control panel helps you set up email addresses, create databases, manage files, view statistics and do dozens of other tasks related to your site. Without a good, comprehensive, easy to use control panel area, it is easy to become confused when managing your features.
Importance: 5
Like FTP, file managers let you upload files, as well as edit and delete them if need be. These also let you create new directories and set file permissions when needed.
Importance: 4
If you have built your own website or had one custom made, preinstalled programs like blogs, discussion forums and ecommerce software may not be needed, however these can be installed as additional areas of your website. Preinstalled scripts can be set up within minutes with a few mouse clicks in your control panel area. While convenient and easy to set up, these can also be used as your actual website without the need for building one from scratch.
Importance: 3
With the huge use of video and file sharing, many hosts have restrictions on these areas. If you have a video intense site or plan to do a lot of file movement and downloads, this could be a critical feature, however the average user may not need to worry about limitations in these areas.
Importance: 4
Your webhost needs to have top notch support available, whether by phone, email or support ticket system, anytime of day or night. You never know when an issue may come up and your site is not working properly, or not at all.
Importance: 5