Professional Website Hosting - How To Select

A professional website hosting service is essential if you are a business owner to ensure that your site:

Unless you are just starting a new business you will probably need more than a standard shared hosting account.  Even if your business is new and a shared service is ok it is  still important that your hosting provider offers an upgrade path to follow as you grow.The first upgrade from a shared account might be to Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting.  This means that a server is configured such that multiple customers are hosted on a single server but the resources are split rather than shared i.e. they all have their own mini server.  By using a virtual private server, professional website hosting companies can offer small businesses the performance, security, and control of a dedicated server at a much lower cost.Later you may outgrow VPS hosting and need your own dedicated server. Here you actually have a physical server (which you may get to select the specification of) for your sole use.You need to be aware that as you upgrade, the services of the hosting company may change.  For example, a hosting company may backup their shared servers but if you have a dedicated server backups may be up to you.As well as the physical infrastructure you will also need to consider a website host’s software infrastructure.  If you have your site developed professionally your developers will specify the requirements and your website host will need to match these.The most important is whether Linux or Microsoft hosting is required (this decision is not connected with your PC operating system).  Linux is used for approximately 80% of web servers and may be slightly cheaper because it is open source.  Linux also has a reputation for speed and stability.  It supports a wide range of software, applications, languages, and databases such as PHP, Perl, PostGre, MySQL.  However, it cannot accommodate some Microsoft technologies.The main reason for using a Windows environment is that it can run Microsoft software such as Access and MS SQL databases. This will also be required if your developers use Microsoft programming environments like Active Server Pages and Visual Basic Scripts.If the requirements of your site do not force you one way or the other it is generally best to go the Linux route.