Hosting Plan Features You Should Be Seeking

Web hosts can offer you a range of hosting plan features in order to attract customers to them. These features comprise disk space, e-mail boxes, auto responders, FTP access, free bandwidth, templates etc. The choice is up to you to decide which hosting plan suits you best.

The first requirement you should pay attention to is space. You will need to decide web space by basing yourself on the volume of content you plan to host and also the nature of the content that is to be hosted. For example, you will require more space if you plan to host images, audio files or graphics.

The next major requirement is bandwidth. It is important for you to purchase sufficient bandwidth in order to cater for your traffic. When the internet just started, bandwidth was a major resource constraint. Today, with excess bandwidth available most web hosts will offer you as much as 1,000 GB of data transfer free.

Some web hosts can provide you with web analytics as well. This is a very practical service to buy because it will give you insight into the way your site is being employed. You will learn the places from where the traffic is coming from, the pages that are being read, the amount of time a visitor will spend on your sites, the search engines that are sending the traffic and so on.

You must also bear in mind that the log files that are used to perform the traffic analysis take up some valuable space. With daily logs, you will be able to download and delete them, every day. Nevertheless, if you have monthly logs, you will not be able to delete them till the end of the month. Sometimes, the web host will include this space in your server space. Make sure you clarify this point or else you might end up losing several megabytes of space over a period of time in order to log files.

You will also need to test if your server space comprises space for e-mail boxes. If it does, you will have to set a maximum limit for each mail box. This will save you from exceeding your limited storage.

If you are setting up a business site then you must request auto responders. This little software is very practical for sending automatic return mail to the visitors who show some interest in your site. In the same way, forwarding aliases can be also useful if you want to send your e-mail to a filter program, before it gets to you.

Further, make sure that your hosting plan includes FTP access. This is crucial because you cannot host content without FTP (file transfer protocol) access. Most web hosts won’t charge you for access to FTP.

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