If web hosting never existed or was very scarce, just imagine what it would be like to get your business off the ground. Web hosting can start from 0-500 per month. There is an amazing selection of web hosting providers out there. The key is, to know which one to pick.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth is calculated by the number of visitors and how much you upload items to your website. A lot of hosting providers start at 1 gigabyte. That`s a good choice if you are using your website for personal stuff.

The list goes on, right up to 'Unlimited' hosting. That`s what I decided to use recently and I`m glad I did. The visitors to my site are increasing every day, with visitors saying they have bookmarked it.

Calculating bandwidth:

Bandwidth can be calculated using an average of 1 megabyte per visitor. This is an average for someone who is just visiting your site. If your pages have huge amounts of graphics on them, every time they open a new page, a whole load more is used up. Even more so, if you have downloadable things like songs (which average 3-4MB) then you can expect that to be used too. So, if you get 10 visitors who download a song, that`s 30-40MB + their browsing usage too.

CPanel

When you are looking at purchasing web hosting, you will see ads for CPanel. CPanel simply means Control Panel, it`s really that simple. I prefer CPanel 11. It`s very easy to use and has the ability to set up a blog script within seconds.

Some of the free hosting providers will have a CPanel and when you try to upload your blog script using Fantastico, they ask you to upgrade your account. This can be very annoying when trying to upload if you have pain-stakingly built a blog `offline`. So, be very careful who you choose.

Uptime

Some people get confused with this definition. Uptime means - how reliable is the server? and if it has to be maintained or crashes (downtime), how long will my website be offline. One thing I have noticed quite a lot is that `free hosting providers` tend to have quite a bit of downtime. This isn`t unexpected because their resources are very restricted. As I said earlier, they are OK for a personal website which isn`t going to be getting a lot of visitors. On the other hand, if you have a web site which is your main business, you really do need to have a web host provider which guarantees at least 99% uptime.

Customer Support

In some peoples eyes, customer support is a sore point. I have heard many people complaining about unanswered customer request tickets (request for help from host provider). You really do need a company which offers 24/7 customer support. being closed at weekends is no good if your web site has a problem. Customers these days want their problem sorted out within a reasonable time. Believe me when I say, some web hosting providers have a customer care team that really does not care. They become abusive and unhelpful if you ask them more than one question. Don`t take too much notice of their `Live Support` tab either. It always seems as though no one is ever online to help.

I found a web site team that treats me as a human being and not a cash machine.

The customer service is `second to none`. I have used many advisers and this one has to be the best, ever!

Steve Draper is known as The Coach. Go to http://better-marketer.com.