What Features To Look For When Applying For Good Hosting Plan
by: Richard Clement
When looking for a host, it will be useful to obtain as much information as possible about the web hosting company itself and the services they offer. These pre-sales questions are a way to check several things about the web hosting company. You can obtain detailed information about the services they offer - the web hosting plans they have, the features included there, etc.
These days hosting plans on the web are getting very competitive and features of each plan are comparatively the same among web hosting providers. Whether novice or expert, you can find some useful information in this article to learn about some of the considerations to look at when you choose a web hosting service.
In this article I will not talk about things like space ,traffic and prices since there are plenty of related articles nowadays rolling around the net. My goal will be to clarify some of the most important features you have to look for when choosing your web hosting provider.
The following are 10 basic features that can be found in a Unix/Linux hosting plans that every serious hosting provider should offer you.
· Control Panel - This is where you manage your hosting account. In the context of web hosting it is an on-line application that give us the user ability to control many aspects of his web hosting account including, but not limited to: creating mailboxes, setup email forwarding, uploading and editing files, creating sub domains, park additional domains, automated installing of ready to use scripts and programs, managing databases, setup shopping carts. You need to check what exactly is included in a given control panel with the web hosting company you have chosen to go with.Some hosts use a third party control panel like cPanel or Plesk. Others use an inhouse developed control panel.The moment you signup for a hosting package, you must be provided with a CP to manage your webspace.
· POP3 email accounts & aliases - yourname@yourdomain.com is an example POP3 email. POP3 is an electronic mail protocol used to retrieve messages stored on an Internet/intranet e-mail server. Whenever a client wants to check for messages it connects to its Internet Service Provider's e-mail server and uses POP3 to login to its mailbox and download its messages.
· FTP Accounts & Virtual FTP - This is where you upload your files, delete them, update them. This again comes along with the CP. Make sure you have handful of FTP sub-accounts also to provide your clients/users password protected directories. This is very much useful wherein your clients / users can use the FTP to upload /download files from particular password protected folder of your website.
· Backup - Most of the Hosts take Automated Backups. But users do not take much care on this while choosing the hosting plan. This feature is as essential as any other in this list.
· Web Statistics - Analysis is of your website visitors plays a important role in the success of your website. Say, your website has been launched and you get 50 unique visitors or more than 500 visitors per day. Whatever the case may be, you can view the report using Statistics Application that run in the server backend. A popular web statistic software is Webalizer.
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What Features To Look For When Applying For Good Hosting Plan
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About The Author
Richard Clement is an online publisher dedicated in helping online users in various categories. He is an online marketing specialist and owner of ItStandard.Net hosting company.For more info visit his site http://www.itstandard.net.
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