Six Tip on Choosing the Right Small Business
Web Hosting Services

Home >> FAQs >> How To Find Web Hosting Package

Choosing a good small business web hosting service is not difficult. However, there are several important considerations that you must take into account in order to find the right web host.

1.) Good small business web hosting services should offer Big Disk Space
Disk Space is measured in bytes. 1 megabyte (MB) is roughly 1,000,000 bytes. 1 gigabyte (GB) is about 1000 MB. Most small business web hosting services at Top-20-Web-Host.com offers at least 5000 MB or 5 GB in disk space. Some small business web hosting services from the directory offer as much as 170,000 MB or 170 GB.
It's not difficult to calculate disk size needed for your web site. First, you must add all your files to find out how much space your site needs now. Then, you must consider future additions and updates to your web site.

2.) Good small business web hosting services should offer Big Bandwidth or Data Transfer
Data Transfer measures how much data was transmitted from your site to the visitor and back.
If the web site consists of several pages for a total of 3 MB, and there are 3,000 visitors a month who visit every page, then amount of data transferred is 3,000 * 3 = 9,000 MB. Since probably not every visitor will visit every page of your site, the best formula to calculate monthly data transfer is the following: Data Transfer = # Of Visitors * Page Size * # Of Pages Viewed.

3.) What Operating System do the small business web hosting services offer?
Many small business web hosting services use Linux or Windows operating systems. Your choice of operating system should be based on what programs you plan to use.
Both Windows & Linux are fine for HTML files. However, Windows is best for ASP while Linux is fine with Perl/CGI. Take a look at what software and databases your prospective host is supporting.
Usually Windows business web hosting is more expensive. Some people wrongly believe that you must use the small business web hosting services that have the same operating system as your computer. Actually you can use Windows on your computer and have Linux host, and vice versa.

4.) The Uptime of the small business web hosting services.
Uptime is a percentage of time your site is available online.
Sometimes even the very best small business web hosting services shuts down due to numerous reasons (outage, maintenance, human error...). However, your uptime must be at least 99% to 99.5%, and top small business web hosting services provide it.

5.) The Customer Support of the small business web hosting services.
It is very important to have professional help if something is wrong with your site. Most small business web hosting services at www.Top-20-Web-Hosting.com offer 24/7 customer support.

6.) The Price of the small business web hosting services.
Naturally you want to pay the lowest price possible for small business web hosting services. However, sometimes cheap or free isn't necessarily good.
You want to make sure that your small business web hosting services offers enough web space, data transfer and good customer support even if it means paying a little more. This is especially true for E-Commerce web sites. If your site is too slow to load or is down for some time, you lose customers and money.
I don't recommend free hosts because they often place banners and other ads on your web pages. Many of them go out of business on a short notice or no notice at all. Also some free hosts won't let you use your domain name and you will have to use their domain that can make your address too long and hard to remember.