Reseller Web Hosting Explained by David Dunlap

Reseller web hosting is a web hosting service that re-bundles services available from real hosts or primary providers. Reseller web hosting could be an individual or small business that makes use of the bandwidth and web servers of a higher tier provider or primary host and resells the same to the customers by offering value added services like web designing, domain registration and web programming.
Most real hosting companies allow reseller web hosting in order to boost their sales. Recently, a significant number of web hosting businesses have infiltrated the internet with an eye on the ever-growing number of people who are jumping online. In order to remain competitive, hosting companies look for ways to market their services to a greater number of people rather than offering their services individually. This leads to the business of reseller web hosting accounts. In reseller web hosting, real hosts are able to generate bulk businesses and delegate individual clients to reseller servers. In turn, reseller web hosting businesses look after some individual client's needs. This is a win-win situation for both, since real hosts will have an intermediary in the form of reseller web hosting to individual customers without having to attend to them one by one. The reseller is also able to put up a business and earn income without having to shell out capital outlays. Although in some instances they do compete with each other for a fair share of the web hosting market, the real hosts can still benefit from this set-up considering they do charge a certain amount from resellers.
The services offered by a reseller web hosting service do not really differ from a real host. As a matter of fact, reseller web hosting offers more features to the customers. Due to the added value services, reseller web hosting can offer web design and programming services to each customer that are often times not possible from real hosts. Real hosts tend to focus on bulk accounts and corporate clients. Reseller web hosting offers value added services to customers in order to maintain a competitive edge against bigger web hosting services.
Reseller web hosting is also better able to establish friendly relationship with their customers that go beyond the contract terms. This is the secret for those successful reseller web-hosting services. They fill the need that bigger hosting servers cannot provide. Those who want to start a reseller web hosting business are advised to look for a real host, such as challengehost or Dataneuron.com. It is very easy to obtain a reseller account from a real host these days.
If you need simple hosting services for your web site and you prefer to have personal attention from the web host for design and programming then a reseller web hosting account is highly recommended. However, if you have a business website that requires complex e-commerce solutions, have a very large number of customers accessing your web site or you have a large number of websites to be hosted, a reseller hosting would probably not suffice. This is particularly true for e-businesses. For this, you need a real host provider for your web site.

Cheap Webhosting - What You Need To Know Before You Sign Up

Cheap Web hosting - What You Need To Know Before You Sign Up
Web hosting is a service that enables you to upload and store a site's HTML documents and related files on a Web server that can be accessed through the internet. Another term for webhosting is site hosting.
With a number of webhosting companies on the internet, it is sometimes hard to find the one that offers true cheap and quality webhosting. Before, you began to search for companies that offer cheap web hosting, it is important to know what exactly you are looking for. This includes your site features, internet programming languages, database connectivity features, email addresses, domain name, traffic you expect and many other considerations.
Some cheap webhosting services offer 'unlimited bandwith'. This is a false claim since 'bandwith' refers to the amount of information between the hosting servers and the end user. Another important consideration in choosing a cheap web hosting is its support services. You must know how prompt the cheap webhosting company can address the problems you encountered. Do some research on the web hosting company's website. Know how long they have been in operation. Then know if the company offers the service you are looking for.
If you purchase your own domain name, make sure that the cheap webhosting company supports them and they give you 1 email address. A number of companies offer 10 or more custom pop email accounts with unlimited forwarding address with sometimes no additional costs.
Linux based cheap web hosting services are usually cheaper that Windows, offers PHP and MySQL and telnet accounts. Linux is often used by cheap webhosting companies because Linux based languages and databases are free to install. Windows are usually more expensive that Linux, should support ASP, could have Cold Fusion, Access, SQL Server at additional cost.
It is hard to find cheap webhosting using Windows since it is expensive for a hosting company to purchase. Cold Fusion, Allair, SQL Server need to be purchased at quite a high price. Access is sold at a very minimal price. If you are looking for extra features in your Windows host then you should be ready to pay extra.
If you are looking for a cheap webhosting service, then a Linux based service would be the one for you. However, if you are using Microsoft Access databases, a Windows based hosting service with Access support is a requirement.
When choosing a cheap web hosting company, you must check their support services, do some research from others and compare your requirements with that of the cheap web hosting company's offerings before you take the plunge.

Shared Webhosting

Shared webhosting is housing and serving files for a web site. For individuals or small to medium scale businesses that cannot afford to gain an extreme robust connection to the internet for their web site on their own.
This is where the virtual or shared web hosting businesses come in. They provide the customers a way to outsource their Internet requirements in a more affordable way.
The shared webhosting service allows individuals and companies to share the cost of a fast Internet connection for serving files. This is the basic, entry-level fee-based hosting service available to the customer.
Shared web hosting allows clients to host their website on a powerful server at a minimal monthly cost. Shared webhosting provides individual sites with connectivity and guaranteed uptime.
Shared webhosting is designed to host small-scale e-commerce sites web pages. Shared webhosting is used by first-time webmasters because you can have a reliable Web presence without having advanced technical know-how.
Shared webhosting is good for small-scale consumer because they are assured of transparent services, domain name for its website and set of email addresses.
Shared webhosting's low cost makes it very attractive to the consumers. A minimal monthly fee for a shared webhosting service is preferable than a dial-up service.
Most small-scale business and individuals choose shared webhosting because of its low price and it provides basic services. Another reason for shared webhosting popularity is its convenience. Site activation and set-up time in shared web hosting usually takes a few minutes after purchasing the services.
Shared webhosting services are usually bundled. With a minimal monthly fee, it offers multi-platform website solutions. Bundled services include: minimum amount of disk storage space for web pages, minimum amount of data transfer, email forwarding services with physical email boxes that allows you email aliases at your domain name, unlimited file transfer protocol (FTP) services.
Shared web hosting also provide access to Web statistics for you to gage the number of internet clients visiting your web site. This service usually includes raw statistical logs. Also, shared webhosting will include free 24X7 technical supports.
Other services in a shared webhosting are daily tape backup of web site, anonymous FTP server for you to provide public access via file transfer protocol format and CGI-BIN access to upload scripts that will add features to your website.
Shared web hosting is truly a great way to avail of fast internet connection for your website at a very minimal monthly cost.

All about Linux/Unix-based hosting

It means hosting that is provided on Linux/Unix operating systems platforms. There isn't much difference between these two types of operating systems because Linux/Unix is an improved version of Linux/Unix operating system. When just applying for web hosting companies for web hosting that is based on Linux operating system it doesn't matter which one you are using on your computer as it is commensurable with any operating system. Usability Some years ago Linux operating system used to be available only for professionals and if you were not an experienced user you had no future with this OS. In the last couple of years the situation has changed. Providers have done their best to make users' web sites administrating more comfortable and easier. In case you're just a beginner you'll find friendly control panels that include Web-interface. And if you are an experienced user you can control your site by means of shell. Reliability Experts claim that Unix-based platform is one of the most reliable ones but it will mainly depend on maintenance stuff professionalism. Thus quality and stability of Linux web hosting won't depend on some sudden system bugs and the operating system consistency itself secures your web site operating dependability. Functionality In this area Linux differs the most from other popular platforms. It can handle a lot of processes that happen at the same time. This gives you a possibility to get more from the server. What Scripting Languages Are Available For Unix? Unix supports a wide variety of application languages, more than any other operating system. The most common applications of such kind include C, C++, Shell, Perl, Tcl, Python, Java and PHP. What Databases Does Unix Support? Databases available for Unix are mSQL and mySQL. The one you choose would depend on your own needs and your Host Provider's offers. This is important for you to review when choosing a hosting company. Cost Linux operating system was developed by Linus Torvalds as an alternative to other operating systems and is being improved by many specialists all around the world. Most of its versions are free of charge. This circumstance makes Linux-based hosting much cheaper than any other. As for Linux versions they are sometimes called Linux Distributions. The most popular Distributions are RedHat and Mandrake. Which are easy to install have a lot of different utilities and suitable for any web hosting type. Why choose Linux/Unix-based hosting? So, as it was mentioned before using this platform is cheaper and more convenient than others. All existent scripts, like PHP, function best when using the Linux-based web hosting. Linux/Unix based web hosting upgrading possibilities increase when using Shell and Telnet access. The Linux/Unix-based platform is probably the most stable and reliable.

Choosing a Web Host- Frequently Asked Questions

In this article my aim is to provide you with the information required to choose a web host. There are several things that you need to take into account when choosing a web hosting provider, below you will be provided with answers to frequently asked questions which will help you choose your next web hosting provider.

Q. How reliable is my chosen web hosting provider?
A. It is common for web hosting providers in this day and age to offer some form of uptime guarantee, if you are running a business website and the uptime of this site is a priority, choose a web host that offers an uptime guarantee. The reason for this is the host will do everything in their power to avoid an outage on your site as it will cost them money, usually in the form of extra months credited to your hosting account depending on the length of the outage. For a business related site, you should choose a host that offers an uptime guarantee of 99% or better.

Q. What kind of performance can I expect from my chosen web hosting provider?
A. A good hosting company will have multiple high speed connections to the internet, and will also be providing their own network infrastructure rather than on-selling another company's service. Also the servers should be fast, in the shared hosting space generally good providers will be using Pentium 4 machines with dual processors or better.

Q. Does your chosen host offer good phone support?
A. When choosing your host, look for one that offer 24/7 phone support that's always available with a live operator. To test this aspect, try calling your chosen hosts support line at differing times of the day and night and on weekends to get an understanding of their support lines reliability.

Q. How much should my chosen hosting cost me?
A. Entry level hosting in this day and age is very good value when you take into account what features are on offer. For $4 to $8 per month you can expect a host to offer a good amount of storage space and a good amount of bandwidth.

Q. How much bandwidth will I need for data transfer from my host? A. Using this as a rough guide you can choose a plan based on the following figures. A typical personal website should get by with less than 2GB of bandwidth per month. A small to medium business website serving text and small images should allow around 5GB of transfer. A larger website serving files, videos, or audio files should allow 10GB or more per month depending on the amount of visitors the website receives.

Q. How does my chosen host handle security?
A. Usernames and passwords should be required to control the host and manage your website. Your host should also backup your files on a daily basis at a minimum and offer mechanisms to retrieve these backups in the event of a server failure.

Q. What about my hosts control panel?
A. Almost all hosting packages come with some form of a control panel. This control panel allows you to configure all aspects of your hosting though your web browser without learning how to use the server's operating system for configuration. Popular control panels include cPanel, Plesk, Ensim and Hsphere, with cPanel the most commonly used control panel. If you are a beginner to hosting, choose a provider that offers cPanel as this control panel is very easy to use.

Q. What about my hosts email support?
A. Almost all hosts offer POP3 mail accounts, be sure to choose a hosting plan that offers you enough accounts that you need to create for your users. Almost all hosting providers also offer spam and anti-virus options for email accounts which can be a great security feature if you are concerned about this.

Q. I want to run my own online store, what do I need?
A. If you have plans of running an online store, look for a hosting provider that offers E-commerce features. To run an E-commerce site firstly your site will need a security certificate, this is required to process credit card transactions, ideally you should use a 3rd party service to provide the certificate and handle the processing of credit card transactions eliminating the need for your server to have extra security features. Using a 3rd party for credit card transactions will generally cost a small percentage of each transactions value.

Q. I need help to make the final choice of hosting provider?
A. If your plans include having a website that you will be relying on for income or storing important data, you will need to make sure you choose a host with the best technical support possible. A lot of hosts these days offer forums for technical support as well, while these forums are a great help when solving small problems related to your hosting, they shouldn't be used for mission critical issues.

Final Words Take your time and check what each host has to offer, there are many web hosting providers with many different plans on offer, you will find which service fits your needs after careful examination of each web hosting provider, take the time to compare each plan, its cost, the level of technical support offered and feature set and you should not have any problems choosing a web hosting provider.