There are a couple of things that you will need to consider before choosing web hosting for your business.

1. Choosing a domain name

First of all you will need to choose a domain name for your company’s website. The name you choose should relate to your business or be the name of your company. Obscure domain names will make it harder for potential customers to recognise and find your website. Check if the domain name that you want is available here > Domain name checker!

2. Hosting Requirements

You need to consider the basic requirements for your website.

For a small business site it would be best to choose a shared Linux web hosting package. Linux hosting is commonly cheaper than Windows web hosting so unless you require services such as ASP and .NET Linux hosting is preferred. The type of hosting that you choose does not reflect the operating system that you have on your computer.

Up-time- Check the up-time guarantee stated on the hosting companies website. You will want to find a host that offers 99.9% + up-time to ensure that your customers can find your site at any time.

Disk Space – Most websites use less than 50mb of disk space so to be safe its best to look for packages that offer around 100mb. If you have lots of large files on your website then you will need to find a larger hosting plan however try not to be lured into web hosts that oversell their services.

E-mail Accounts -  A handful of e-mail accounts is usually enough to satisfy most businesses so just check the web hosts site to ensure that there will be enough for your needs.

E-commerce Support – If you have intentions to sell products online you need to ensure that your web host supports features such as SSL certificates and e-commerce software.

Server Location- As your website grows so will your customer base so you need to look at where they are located. If you have 70% of your customers in the UK, it is recommended that you select a UK hosting plan so that the majority of your clients have a slightly faster connect to your website.

Hosting Support – As a business if you have any website problems you will want to have these fixed as soon as possible. Plan for errors to occur and check that your web host has fast technical support to resolve any issues that you may have as not to affect your day to day sales.

Everyone has different needs when looking for shared web hosting. You will need a certain amount of space and bandwidth for your website. You may also need databases, add-on domains, sub-domains and e-mail accounts. You should check with the host that the package will meet your needs.

Over Selling Resources

A small website will not need many resources; however people are caught in the headlights by large numbers. A large majority of web hosts on the Internet oversell their services. You may have come across plans that include 500GB Space and 2TB of bandwidth, this is overselling. If you were to actually use all these resources I’m sure the host would soon close your account on the grounds of “high CPU usage”. There is no need to get lots of space and bandwidth, simply get what you need at a moderate price.

Resource Limits

Most shared hosting will have resource limitations such as CPU etc. This means that you can only use X% resources for your site for X amount of time. If you are running scripts, check that they can run in the time limits set by the host. You should also check database size limits, and outgoing e-mail limits that may be in place.

You may only be able to have a database up to so many MB. If you have a forum then this is likely to grow and you may need to upgrade so you might want to plan ahead and see how easy upgrades are going to be. E-mail limits may be set hourly which means you can only send for example 200 e-mails an hour.

Reseller Hosts

Reseller hosting makes it easy for anyone to setup a web host. This means you need to check to see how reliable the host is. The last thing you want is a weeks hosting before the person running it ditches their hosting site leaving you with no money and no hosting. To avoid this look for a host that has good reviews from others and is well established. If you are insistent on going for a certain host check how long they have been operating for, if they are a registered business and you may also check there PayPal transaction rating if this is available.

More on Reviews

There are many review sites that you can take a look at, however it is likely that the host themselves have added their website to allow reviews. This also implies that they have the ability to edit and remove reviews that have been left. The best place to get reviews is from existing customers – how obvious was that? You can do this by running reverse IP on the hosts IP address. This will allow you to get some of the web addresses on that hosts server.

Hopefully you will not get other sites run by the host so check the WHOIS info to different details and send an e-mail to the site owner asking about the service. You may also want to Google terms such as “hosts name reviews” or “hosts name scam” to see what comes up. Forums are another good place to ask, however if someone simply keeps saying the host is great, check the website URL that they have hosted with the host to ensure they are not just self promoting.

Up time

Up time is very important in hosting and now many hosts have a service level agreement that ensure you receive X% of up time. You may want to use external monitors to see what the up time for a web host is like. The only real way to find the truth is to ask previous customers due to some monitoring sites allowing hosts to remove outages from statistics.

Support

This is one of the most important things in hosting. Check what types of support are available. Do they have Phone, E-mail, Instant Messenger, REAL Live Chat or Ticket Support? If there is a problem with your website you want it sorted asap so ensure that the facilities are there for you to receive help when you need it. Ensure their after sales support is as good as their before sales.

Summary

Always go with a host that has a good reputation for up time, pricing and customer service. New hosts with great deals might to be around for too long due to lack of experience. It only takes one thing to go wrong with a small host that removes their budget for servers so ensure that your host is there to stay.

Those are a few basic things to look out for; more advanced users may wish to check that the server IP is not black listed and that they have a good server infrastructure etc.

If you are in a band or group and need web hostingto promote yourselves then look no further. iUKHost offer cheap web hosting services where you can upload your bands website.

With the iUKHost LSH2 Plan there is 500mb of disk space and 5GB of bandwidth. The package comes complete with cPanel that allows you to control your website all for £24.99 a year.

300MB Web Disk Space

This is the amount of disk space that you are allocated on the server. You can upload many web pages, images, video files etc at any time.

3GB Data Transfer per Month

Everytime your website is accessed, data is sent across the Internet. This is your limit of data transfer. The more visitors that your website has the more transfer will be used. This is the same if you have large image or video files loading on your website.

E-mail Features

You can setup an unlimited number of e-mail accounts that are each password protected. You can access these by configuring your mail client such as Outlook or by using webmail applications such as Horde Mail, Squirrel Mail or RoundCube Webmail.

Control Panel

You can manage every part of your website from the easy to use control provided with your hosting account. Using cPanel you can configure e-mail, databases, domains, files and install scripts.

Domain Registration or Transfer

We can register a domain on your behalf or you can transfer your current domain name to us.

Alcester Web Hosting

As a actor you want to get noticed and show off previous work that you have done. A website is a great way to do this because you can have your contact details, head shots or a gallery, a personal blog and a forum for your fan base along with many other features.

With the iUKHost LSH2 plan there is 500mb of disk space and 5GBof bandwidth. The package comes complete with cPanel that allows you to control your website all for £24.99 a year.

This is more than enough space to have all of the above with plenty of bandwidth to handle the traffic that your website will receive. Using the Fantastico software that comes with the package, you can install many applications just with a few clicks. If you are not experienced with HTML then use our site builder. If you need help with this, our support team is more than happy to assist you.

You can host adult content on our servers providing it remains legal. We recommend the LSH4 hosting package for this simply because it has large amounts of space and bandwidth to handle your video and image files.

With the iUKHost LSH4 Plan there is 2GB of disk space and 20GB of bandwidth. The package comes complete with cPanel that allows you to control your website all for £59.99 a year. If you find that you have a larger site and need more space and bandwidth then please contact us for a bespoke quote.

Many bloggers ask this question and they usually start with a free service such as WordPress or Blogger. They then want to expand and be able to customise their blog more with extra plug-ins and themes. These and having your own domain name are the advantages of hosting a blog yourself.

You also have more freedom to install adverts on your website and profit from your blogging where this is restricted with some free services. Other benefits to hosting your own blog are getting a unique name and doing away with a sub domain from a free service. This will give your blog a more professional look.

Another question that is likely to arise is how hard is it to set it up by myself? The answer to this is usually no, however it depends on which host you choose.

If you have no web experience, then its best to pick a web host that has Fantastico. Fantastico is a feature that allows you to click install applications such as WordPress. With this you can have your blog up in minutes.

See our recommended blog hosting package.

There are thousands of cheap web hosting packages on the web, however finding a reliable one can be hard. Before you commit to a host you should do some research about how reliable they are, what type of support they provide, backups etc. Cheap hosting packages may neglect features such as regular backup to cut costs.

Hosting your site with iUKHost will allow you to have as many site features as you want such as databases and e-mails because these are limited only by your accounts space. All our packages are reasonably priced to provide a cheap solution for beginner webmasters. If you are a series web master and need more resources you are best getting a more expensive package.

Support times are important with a web host. If you run your own website as a hobby then support that responds in 24 hours is OK. If you are a business, you could lose thousands of pounds in that time if your website is not online due to a server issue. This means that fast support is required and this is not always available with a cheap host. Businesses should always research hosting very seriously to find one that is suitable for that businesses needs.

Dedicated servers give you great power and flexibility at a surpisingly low cost.  Linux and Windows dedicated servers can be built to your specifications which means you get what you need and do not have to compromise. Fully managed Linux and Windows dedicated server solutions can include MS Exchange Server, SQL server, VOIP server, Game server, Load Balanced server & Server Mirroring.