Hello!
In answering your question I am dividing it into two parts:
1) Domain Registration
2) Web Hosting
1.DOMAIN REGISTRATION
Domain registrations have become cheaper year after year, and there
are no quality issues as far as choosing a registrar is concerned. The
only caution you have to take it to avoid some free Domain
registration companies wherein you are not the authorized owner of the
domain. Such companies usually market their services as ?free? but as
one checks, the Domain ownership is in their name.
Since domain registration is very cheap: some companies offer it for
free if you choose their hosting plan.
The global Domain Registration database is maintained by ICANN which
has authorized a list of companies for registration. Usually these
companies sublet the registration business by assigning resellers. If
you feel that you are going to register more domain name it is
advisable to become a reseller of a registration company. This can
make the per-domain rates cheaper for you.
Following is a partial list of Retail Domain Name Prices, August 2005
according to Netcraft.com
Company One-year.com price Primary Business Primary Region
======= ============= ============ ===========
Netfirms $4.95 Shared Hosting America
NetFirms.com
1&1 Internet AG $5.99 Mixed Hosting Europe
1and1.com
Hostway $6.95 Shared Hosting America
hostway.com
Interland $7.95 Mixed Hosting America
Interland.com
Web.com $7.95 Mixed Hosting America
Web.com
AIT Domains $7.99 Mixed Hosting America
airdomain.com
Stargate $8.49 Shared Hosting America
Stargateinc.com
Go Daddy Inc $9.20 Domain Registrar America
Godaddy.com
2)HOSTING
To choose one, you should know the requirements of your website like,
size, traffic expected, programming languages used, components used,
SSL/ecommerce integration etc. Please don?t get confused if you don?t
know about all this or if you just want to venture into web based
business. In that case you can choose a ?Starter Package? from a
?good? (parameterized by Customer Support, Features, Price) hosting
company.
If you are rather choosy about selecting a hosting company you may
want to do some research on hosting companies. webhosting.info
provides information about Top hosting companies of the world.
Following is a List of top
Rank Hosting Company Country Market Share Total Domains
1 WILDWESTDOMAINS.COM United States 8.8291 % 4,813,764
2 ENOM.COM United States 4.7075 % 2,566,606
3 NETWORKSOLUTIONS.COM United States 3.3847 % 1,845,400
4 REGISTER.COM United States 2.9715 % 1,620,107
5 YAHOO.COM United States 2.5682 % 1,400,198
6 DIRECTNIC.COM United States 2.4399 % 1,330,248
7 SCHLUND.DE Germany 1.4586 % 795,243
8 BUYDOMAINS.COM United States 1.2572 % 685,448
9 ONEANDONE.COM United States 1.1755 % 640,883
10 DOMAINSPONSOR.COM United States 1.1358 % 619,249
11 DOTSTER.COM United States 1.1228 % 612,166
12 FABULOUS.COM Australia 1.1088 % 604,558
13 MYDOMAIN.COM United States 0.6592 % 359,425
14 VERIO.COM United States 0.6109 % 333,051
15 SEDOPARKING.COM Germany 0.6047 % 329,669
For more information please visit www. webhosting.info.
Budget is the prime consideration for many people while choosing a
hosting company, since they want to test the feasibility of the
hosting provider. In my earlier answers to a question about hosting I
mentioned:
?Choosing a cheap web hosting provider is often a tricky-decision,
since there are many hosting providers who claim to be cheapest but
offer very poor level of services like customer support, availability
of components etc. In my experience of web development I have come
across some reasonable good hosting companies. There is always a
trade-off between price and features. There are top hosting companies
which provide best features, but their cost is also on the high end.?
I also mentioned the following list of the companies which offer good
packages for beginner to small scale businesses.
* DirectI (http://www.directi.com) They are one of the leading domain
registration companies of India. They support the PHP Nukes, CGI, ASP,
Perl etc. You will find the particular useful if you want some other
component to be installed. One main issue while mentioned this that
comes is that usually Virtual hosting does not give all the options
and flexibility as a dedicated hosting plan where you can install and
configure the components of your choice, but then when we are talking
about cheap web hosting, Virtual Hosting is the way to go.
Directi has an online website configurator which lets one choose the
hosting package. You can create your package there and check how much
each feature will cost you. You may check it at
http://order.directi.com/horder/.
I created a basic package of 100MB Linux package in the USA Premium
Datacenter using this tool and it amounted to: $ 34.25 per month. This
package includes the following:
100MB Space, 1FTP User,1000 MB Web and Database bandwidth
10 MB Email Space for 3 POP accounts with 500MB Email bandwidth.
PHP,CGI,SSI support, 10 MB Database Space
They support Linux hosting with PHP, Perl, CGI, Custom Mime types and
error pages, MySQL, SSI, SSL, SSH, Graphical Web stats, Web Logs,
Frontpage and Win2k Hosting with ASP, .NET, SQL Server 2000, MS
Access.
You can also set-up a free trial account and test their services,
this is a good option if you are testing and comparing other hosting
providers, since you can only get the actual hang around the hosting
quality only after actually checking its features in action.
* India Access: (http://www.indiaaccess.com) It is one of the oldest
hosting service provider from India, they prices are very competitive.
They are also flexible in terms of helping you set-up different
components. I spoke to a sales representative there about your
requirements. They can support PHP nukes if the web space requirement
if more than 100 MB. They also have a good customer support. You can
also get the email aliases free.
Like many hosting companies they also provide you with a good featured
Control Panel which lets you configure most of the options of your
hosting account. You can also increase or decrease or add/modify any
feature at any time, the modified cost of which will be reflected from
next month of those modifications.
* NetProHosting: http://www.netprohosting.com. Their basic 100MB
Annual package costs $ 71.40. In this package you will get a range of
features like:
Secure Shell (SSH) Access (available on request)
PHP, Perl & Python
Personal cgi-bin
5 MySQL Databases
Shared SSL Certificate (https)
Server Side Includes (e.g. .shtml)
10 Subdomains
5 Parked Domains
5 Add-On Domains (ideal for multi-domain hosting!)
5Mailman Mailing Lists
Unlimited E-mail Forwarders
Unlimited E-mail Autoresponders
Streaming Audio & Video (http only)
You can check their other hosting plans at
http://www.netprohosting.com/detailedplans.php
* RoyalWebHosting(http://www.royalwebhosting.com). If you are looking
for smaller packages like 5MB ($16.38 annually) or 50MB ($49.98
annually), this hosting provider gives you the option to choose that.
A standard 100MB package costs $108.78 annually. For a detailed
listing of the features supported in each plan please visit:
http://www.royalwebhosting.com/webhosting_solutions.html
* InnerHosts.com: (http://www.InnerHosts.com) A 100MB package with
unlimited POP accounts, will cost you $ 79.67 annually. They support
features like MS CDONTS Mail, MS CDOSYS Mail, ASP.NET, Server Side
Includes, Secure HTTPS/SSL capability, CGI-Bin, FrontPage Extensions
2000/2002, PERL, PHP, C, Server Side PGP,
* ReefHost: (http://www.reefhost.com/plans.html) They have a yearly
hosting plan of $80.00. This supports 100MB Disk Space,1GB of Monthly
Bandwidth, Unlimited Domains, POP Email Accounts, and Sub-Domains.
Over the time, I have also come across some good companies which let
you choose for a months package at a time, this is particularly good
if you want to test their service standards, quality, speed, features
etc.
www.Hostforweb.com
No Set-up cost
DUAL XEON RAID Servers, 4GB RAM
Packages Budget Basic Supreme
Price $4.95/mo $9.95/mo $19.95/mo
Web Space 200MB 1500MB 3000MB
Traffic 20GB 125GB 250GB
www.Hostingzoom.com
Setup cost of $19.95 (one time)
Starting monthly at $4.95 (if you go for 2 year package). Monthly
package will cost 9.95.
http://www.hostingzoom.com/overview.html
==============================
Some answers to question about choosing a hosting company:
I'm looking for a good Web Hosting provider - detailed requirements are provided
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=360647
I need a web hosting service!
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=333061
List worldwide Top 10 Web Hosting and Web Domain Register!
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=311513
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I hope you find the above information useful. I welcome any request
for clarification or more information on this topic, since I believe
that it is often a time-consuming effort for people not familiar with
domain registration/hosting to choose a hosting provider which matches
their budget & requirements and expectations.
Thank you,
muhammad-ga,
Google Answers Researcher |
