You will realize that there are so many web hosting companies out there and even these offer a very wide variety of web hosting packages. These packages come at a fee which also varies greatly depending on the features of particular packages. You will need to make informed choices so that you land a package that is the most suitable for your web site.
The following are some of the things that you ought to look for when you want to choose the package that will suit your needs.
- Space
You will generally need space to run your website. The amount of space you will need will also vary form one website to another. For example, one letter will take a byte of space while 1 page will be roughly 100 letters in that page. You will need space to enable people to be able to view your web page and even download stuffs.
Space will normally vary from 50MB through 100 to sometimes even 200 MB. Naturally, you will b looking for web hosting companies that offer the best deal insofar as space is concerned.
- Emails
You must also consider the number of email addresses that you are allowed to have. For budget accounts, it could range from 1 to 10 email accounts. Some web sites ill require usage of over 250 email addresses.
- Bandwidth
Bandwidth refers to the amount of data that your website can transmit to the users of the web. For instance, for a web page that has 10 kilobytes (this is equivalent to 1000 words), it means 10kb of data is transmitted when one internet user views it. It would mean that 10 users transmit 100kb. Bandwidth is measured on monthly basis.
When you use more than the bandwidth you were allocated, you will be charged more or in some cases you can be immediately disconnected from the web site by the web hosting company.
- Picture format
Some picture formats take up far more space than the other file formats. For example, you are advised to never use mbp formats because they are not compressible and as a result take up a lot of space for nothing. Use of a lot of colors calls for .jpeg format but there is need to ensure that they do not take up a lot of space. Pictures that have a lot of colors say logos and diagrams would be best converted in a .gif format.
There are two proven ways of controlling the data transfer of your web site. First, if you have a picture gallery, you need to provide thumbnails so that your users can pick the pictures that they view. At the same time, the speed of viewing will also have been reduced drastically. The second way of controlling usage in your website is by ensuring that you have you do not have so many pictures on the home page of your website.
