Best-Web-Hosting-Finder.com
      A smart resource for those looking for web hosting...

This site has been designed to help you find the best web hosting that will meet your needs, in the quickest time possible, without the need of going to hundreds of web hosting sites. You will also find recommendations and information on many different aspects of hosting your site. So sit back, relax and enjoy.

Things to Look for In a Web Host

Finding a web site hosting company is easy. There are thousands of them, over 16,000 by one report with more being added all the time. They range in size and the services they offer. Finding a dependable hosting company, however, is not as easy as it looks. Too many hosting companies are the electronic equivalents of the worst used car salesmen. They lie on what they offer with no intention of delivering on what they promise, sell you a clunker that doesn't work as promised, overcharge you, and ignore your messages when you e-mail or call trying to resolve a problem.

The Internet and its relative anonymity offer the opportunity for people to pretend to be something other than what they seem to be. Children can pretend to be hosting companies, people with a computer in their bedroom or basement and a DSL or cable modem line pretend to be hosting companies, people with a shared server reseller account pretend to be companies with their own servers, people using tools like Front Page and others and templates pretend to be site designers even though most have no knowledge of HTML and other important design elements. Only movie making can surpass the kind of illusion that the Internet makes possible.

You might start by making a list of your needs. Keep in mind that the great majority of sites use substantially less than 1 gb of transfer per month and less than 5 mb of hard disk space. Disk space is cheap enough that offering as much as most sites may need is not a problem. Many hosts offer far more than you may need and it can be less confusing if you know what your requirements are. The things to look out for in a web host are price, customer support, reliability, customer service, statistical reporting and any guarantees.

Ways of Hosting Websites

1: Shared Hosting
Your site resides in the same server as several other sites.

Pros: Low cost; little maintenance; better connection; higher reliability and security; professionally managed server

Cons: Less control; do not have full access to server; maximum potential for performance bottlenecks

2: Dedicated Hosting
The Web host provides a server for your site alone.

Pros: More control; more software options; more configuration options; good connection.

Cons: Higher software and maintenance costs; requires technical expertise

3: Colocated Hosting
A server you own is housed at the Web host's site.

Pros: Full control, which may include security; unobstructed access to Internet connection, climate control, and power backup.

Cons: Increased maintenance costs, possibly including security expertise; increased server and software costs; no easy access.

4: Do-it-yourself Hosting
You maintain your own server and Internet connection at your site.

Pros: Full control; instant access to hardware and site; software and configuration flexibility.

Cons: Labor-intensive; requires technical expertise; high costs for equipment, direct Internet connection, and more.

Things to Avoid

-Beware of companies that promise unlimited resources, especially bandwidth or data transfer. They lie. Unlimited bandwidth/data transfer is an impossibility.

-Beware of the companies that rate hosting companies. For the most part, those ratings were bought with advertising dollars. Many of those rating companies are owned by a hosting company.

-Beware of companies that treat your site creation and hosting as a package deal. Some will refuse to give you access to your site so that you are forced to have them perform any changes and redesigns. They often overcharge for their work, which is why they hold your site hostage.

-Beware of the companies that hide their Terms Of Service

-Sometimes (often, actually) big is too big. Some sites boast of thousands of accounts that they host. This is meant to impress you and suggest that if 50 or 60 thousand other customers have chosen them, that you should too. What they don't tell you is that they may have lost 20 or 30 thousand of those customers, or they may have turned over many more times that amount in dissatisfied customers.

-Sometimes cheap is too cheap. It is perfectly natural, even expected, to seek the best deal one can get. For a business site, the best value may be much less expensive than the lowest price. Don't expect to get reliable or prompt service from a free or too cheap host. You might, but the odds are against it.

Operating Systems for web Hosting

The operating system (OS) of a computer is a software that makes the other computer hardware and software work together. The most commonly used operating systems for home computers are Windows and Macintosh. In order to decide what operating system to use for web hosting, one has to be familiar with the underlying technologies that can be used. In addition to the operating system, the server requires a special software for rendering web pages on the internet known as web server software. Most common web server software are Internet Information Services (IIS) for Windows and Apache for all platforms (Windows, Linux and Unix).

Windows
Windows, a Microsoft product, is very popular because of its user friendly interfaces, which made the windowing environment so easy. Almost all tasks can be done by point and click of the mouse instead of writing DOS commands. Windows is recommended for most novice users because of the simplicity of the configurations and help available either from Windows or on the internet. Windows is preferred if you plan to use Active Server Pages (ASP) or .NET as the server technology on IIS. Windows should also be used if Microsoft Access or MS SQL Server is used as a database.

Pros: Server management is much easier in Windows than any other OS. Most software vendors support Windows because of the popularity of the OS. There are in-built software (such as email) that is provided with Windows.

Cons: The Windows server software is costly ($300 - $600 per license), which leads to higher web hosting costs. Portability of the applications to other platforms is a problem if using Windows. The operating system has many other drawbacks such as higher vulnerability to security flaws and hackers.

Unix
Unix is the father of the operating system, and has been used for servers over a few decades. Unix operating systems boasts itself as the most stable and reliable system available. It is used in almost all large and complex computer systems. The hardware that is best suited for Unix are provided by the hardware vendors such as IBM, HP and Sun Microsystems. The servers from these vendors cost a lot of money (often in 100s of thousands of dollars). However, a free version of Unix, known as FreeBSD, is now available for small scale web hosting needs on cheaper server hardware provided by Intel.

Pros: Stability and reliability is the foremost reason of using Unix as a platform. The servers can run for years without restart and memory leaks. Less vulnerable to security flaws and hacker attacks.

Cons: Cost can be a factor for larger implementations of Unix servers. However, FreeBSD is gaining popularity because of its versatality as a free open source Unix platform. Server configuration and maintenance requires special knowledge and skills. Available software for this platform is not as common as it is for Windows.

Linux
Linux has gained a lot of popularity as a web hosting platform because of cost (free), open source, and support for a wide variety of technologies such as PHP and MySQL.

Pros: Unix like environment providing better stability, reliability and performance than Windows. The operating system software is free, so web hosting costs are very low. Support for the most popular free and open source technologies such as PHP, MySQL etc. Due to increasing popularity, a lot of support is available on the internet.

Cons: Server configuration and maintenance requires special knowledge and skills. Available software for this platform is not as common as it is for Windows.

Sizes defined
It helps to understand the nomenclature regarding sizes.

8 bits = 1 byte.

1,024 bytes = 1 kilobyte (Kb).

1,024 kilobytes (Kb) = 1 megabyte (mb or meg)

1,024 megabytes = 1 gigabyte (gb or gig)

1,024 gigabytes = 1 terabyte. (tb)

The above are the correct and exact definitions. Note, however, that some web hosts will use 1000 as the multiplier rather than 1024. Be sure to check with any host regarding how they define these terms.

Globat.com Defies Industry with Significant Web Hosting Upgrades (TopHosts.com)
LOS ANGELES, March 23 /PRNewswire/ — Los Angeles-based Globat.com®, the world leader in Performance Web Hosting(TM), today announced a raft of updates and upgrades to all of its Web hosting packages, including a one-year money-back guarantee, free blogging software, and “forever free” domain names for all new customers.

Globat.com Introduces Major Web Hosting Service Upgrades (Web Host Directory)
Performance web hosting provider, Globat.com, has released updates and upgrades to all of its web hosting packages, including a one-year money-back guarantee, free blogging software, and ''forever free'' domain names for all new customers.

Canada Web Hosting Upgrades Disaster Recovery Services (SYS-CON Media)
Canada Web Hosting recently partnered with Syncsort, Inc. to upgrade its managed disaster recovery services. Using Syncsort's Backup Express, Canada Web Hosting now provides Canadian companies with enterprise-class disaster recovery solutions via its local and offsite backup networks in Toronto and Vancouver. Data backups and recoveries are included with every managed hosting solution provided by