Strategic Internet Marketing

Website Hosting Packages

January 14th, 2008 | by Brian Queenan |

Website hosting packages are not all created alike. It is important that you choose a hosting package that will accommodate your current and future needs. Stay away from the free hosting services because they don’t offer everything that you will need to run an online business. Don’t handcuff yourself with a hosting service that can’t deliver the goods just because they are cheap or free of charge.

Here’s what you will need to have from your website hosting package.

• At least 30 gigs of web storage
• Multiple addon domains
• Autoresponders
• Multiple email accounts
• MySql database capability
• FTP upload capability
• PHP capable
• Has perl and cgi
• Has a shopping cart

The above is the minimum of what you will need for your website hosting package.

Make sure that your website hosting package provides at least 30 gigs of web space. There is nothing worse than not being able to do what you need to do with your online business because you don’t have the space to get it done.

Having multiple addon domains is a must. Don’t confuse an addon domain with a sub domain. A sub domain looks like this subdomain.yourdomain.com while an addon domain looks like this yourdomain.com. While both sub domains and addon domains share the same ip address the addon domain is a separate domain while the sub domain uses a prefix to the main domain.

Multiple addon domains will allow you to setup multiple domains without having to get a new website hosting package for every domain that you want to have which would be very expensive. The only thing that you will have to pay for is to register the additional domain’s which is usually about $10.00 or less each.

Having an autoresponder is an absolute must because it will allow you to send follow-up emails to your customer when they buy something or put in a support request.

You also need to have several email accounts for each segment of your online business. E.g. Support, Administrator, Customer Service etc.

Be sure that your website hosting package provides a MySQL database. MySQL is simply a database that records important information about your online business such as blog info, eCommerce info etc. You may not require a MySQL database now but I will guarantee you at some point you will need it. It is best that you have it from the very start otherwise you will find yourself shopping for a new hosting provider.

You’ll also need an FTP that allows you to upload entire folders to your website. You don’t want an FTP where you have to upload one file at a time or even worse they don’t allow you to use their FTP server at all.

You will also need perl so that you can run scripts from your domain. Most website hosting packages do come with perl but some don’t. Make sure that perl comes with your website hosting package otherwise you won’t be able to run scripts and you will be very limited to what you can do with your online business.

Since many online scripts use php code be sure that your website hosting package allows php to be run on your domain. Some hosting providers don’t have php installed on their servers.

The last thing that you’ll want to have with your website hosting package is a shopping cart especially if you sell multiple items on your website because you will have a fair amount of people that will buy more than one item from your website. Whether you sell multiple items or not you should have a shopping cart anyway.

Most website hosting packages come with much more than listed here these are the most important things that you will need to have with your website hosting package.

Don’t sign on with a hosting provider until you read the next post.