Web Design Made Easy

One of the biggest decisions you will make is choosing where to host your web site.  It is totally possible to host your own account on your own server.  However, this is normally done by only the largest of companies – and for good reason.

Maintaining your own server, whether for an Intranet (available only to your employees) or for the Internet (available worldwide), requires sophisticated equipment (and lots of it) along with the people/employees who can keep it all maintained.  Obviously, this solution is the most expensive.  But, for the very ambitious and/or very large enterprises, this becomes more of a necessity.

But, for most of us, our web sites are hosted on a third-party server.  Think of the web hosting costs as “rent” paid for space for your web pages.  So, now you need to find a third-party “host” to hold your site.

If you’ve ever done a Google search (or used another search engine) for “web hosting” or similar phrase, you probably were inundated by the search results.  There are a ton, and I do mean a ton, of hosting companies available.  So, the question becomes “how do I know who to use”?

That’s a great question.  If you have a friend who has a web site, you can always ask who he/she uses and what their experience has been.  How has the service been?  Has there been any problems with the server being down (and therefore the site being unavailable)? What about the administrative control panel? How easy/intuitive is it to use?

Then, of course, there are the obvious things to consider.  How much disk space to you need, what type of files will you be dealing with, etc.  These questions involve comparing the “services” you get with the hosting account.

It is important to remember that what you need today may not be what you need tomorrow or the next day.  When you’re first starting out on the Internet, your site will likely be small – maybe just a few pages.  You will definitely want a “Home” page, kind of a “welcome” mat, if you will.  You’ll also want an “About” page to tell visitors who you are and something about yourself – why should they come to you with their business. Depending on your type of business, you’ll want a “products” or “services” page, even if you’re not at the stage where you’re offering an online store yet.  A general rule of thumb is usually three to five pages to start, depending on what you’re offering.

However, this is just to start.  As your business grows, your online presence will grow along with it.  At some point, you may be adding an online store to sell products (maybe “services”) to people in other locations.  You may be adding more products and/or services. You may want the ability for customers to set appointments online.  In other words, you will want your site to expand and provide more than it did on the first day.

So, when you select a hosting company, you want to look not only at what you need immediately, but also at what you may need in the future.  The last thing you want to worry about is having to buy add-ons/upgrades to your site.  Such additional purchases tend to add up in price.  Getting all the potential space/services you may need for the next two to three years up front will cost much less than purchasing add-ons/upgrades.

So, what should you look for?  Today, many of the hosting companies offer unlimited disk space with unlimited traffic/bandwidth even with their economy sites.  This means you don’t have to worry how big your files are or how many people visit your site and view your pages/files.

Please note “disk space” refers to the amount of server space your files occupy.  It does not refer to the number of files you have. This is an important distinction and one that you should keep in mind.  While the disk space may be unlimited, look to see if there is a limit to the number of files you may have hosted on your account.  Depending on the items for sale, an online merchant can have a very large number of files due to the images of the individual products.  This is especially true for clothing merchants who may offer a particular item in different colors.  So, be sure to check if the number of files is limited.  If so, what is the limit?

Other items to consider, how many domains can you host? How many sub-domains can you have?  What about e-mail boxes, aliases, etc. – how many are you allotted?  What is the cost of the domain name? Many hosting companies today include the cost of the domain name in the hosting plan.

One of the biggest concerns of acquiring a web site is, of course, the cost.  Contrary to many opinions, the cost is not as prohibitive as you may think.  The cost can range any where from $3.95 a month to $45 a month and maybe more.  Huge difference, huh?

There are also some free companies that offer very basic web sites.  For the most part, I would only suggest a free account for personal blogs, personal sites and other similar non-business sites.  Hosting companies that offer free sites have to get their income from somewhere and generally, that income comes from sponsored ads.  These ads generally appear on your site pages at the top or bottom, whether you want them or not.

Additionally, the services that come with free accounts are severely limited.  The disk space and traffic/bandwidth permitted is generally limited.  The ability to host multimedia files (audio, video, etc.) is almost non-existent.  In short, steer clear of free accounts.  You will wind up having to move your site eventually to a paid account at some point.  And moving a site is no easy task.

So, lots to think about, huh?  The good thing is we’ve done a lot of research in the area. We have tested a number of hosting companies and have narrowed the field to about four that are our favorites.  You will note that only one of the companies offers a free account – Weebly. We added this site because it does allow for easy conversion to a paid account ($2.99/month for 2 years) without having to move the site.

We will be writing individual reviews for these hosting services to let you, our readers, know about the experiences we’ve had.  Then, you can select the one that you prefer.

With all that said, here is the list/comparison of our favorites: