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Are you looking for the perfect website hosting plan for your personal or business website? There are a couple of important considerations that you need to make before you sign on the dotted line. Everyone and every website has a different set of needs, so the hosting plan that is perfect for one business or individual may be very different from the website hosting package that is perfect for you. If you are not careful when selecting the right features and the right website hosting plan, you may very well end up with a website hosting package full of features that you do not need, and severely lacking in those that you do need.

Reliability – The reliability of a website host is the percentage of “uptime” that the host guarantees. You should never, ever accept anything below 99.5% of up time. You should find out what types of backups and safeguards are used by the hosting company because your site is invisible when the server is down.

Bandwidth – This is the amount of transfer you are allowed. You may only receive a low amount when opting for an inexpensive website hosting package, which is okay when you are just beginning to develop your website. However, as you begin to attract more traffic to your website, your bandwidth needs will increase as well. You should look for a website hosting company that offers a large amount of bandwidth for a manageable price, as well as a company that allows you to purchase extra bandwidth as needed to make sure that your website is always fully capable of handling traffic.

Storage – Storage, like bandwidth, is not needed in large quantities right from the start. When you are only beginning to develop your website, you can get by with a small amount of storage. However, as your company website grows, you will need more storage space to house your web pages, media like photos and videos, and all of your content. You should look for a website hosting company that offers a minimum of 200 MB. You may end up needed as much as 1000 MB as your website grows.

FTP – FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. FTP makes it possible for you to transfer all of your files to your website, or to your computer from your website. FTP access is recommended as it allows you to have total control over your website and all of its elements. If the website hosting company does not offer FTP access, choose another one!