Web Hosting for Small Businesses
There are a number of web hosting for small businesses. This type of plan will depend on the type of site you have. You may need a small business web hosting option that includes e-commerce. You may require something that will keep track of your customer list. Your site may be simple and only include company and product information. Whatever your situation, there is a small business web hosting plan out there that is right for you. To find a small business web-hosting plan that is right for your company, you'll first need to decide exactly what your site will be used for. Do you want it to be very helpful and content driven? Do you want to sell your product items online? Do you want to maintain a database? Do you just need a web hosting plan that will accommodate an only designed website? If your site is already designed and ready to go live, it will be fairly simple finding a web-hosting plan that will lodge your small business. All you'll need to do is collect a list of companies that offer small business web hosting plans and then see if they accommodate the features that you need.
You'll need to research carefully, because web-hosting companies do not always disclose the finer details on their main pages. The better way to find a reputable web hosting company is to find current customers and ask them some questions. In order to truly understand how their customer service and consistency measure up, you'll need to get past their website and see what other people have to say. For example, if you select a company based solely on its price, you could be losing money in the long run if the server is constantly down. By renting servers and memory allocation, the small business saves on time and resources.
It also frees the small business from the trouble of dealing with maintenance protocols and securing the network.
If you are interested in acquiring the services of a web-hosting agency, ask for quotations, the products and a list of services that go along with them. Compare offers and always choose one that gives extensive after-sales support, as free technical support really benefits small businesses. Most Web hosting solutions providers feature are highly reliable, high performance platforms. The web host's mainframes are usually located in areas least visited by tornadoes, earthquakes, and other calamities to decrease the risk of system failure. Servers and Mainframes are, of course, automatically backed up by emergency power supply. Web hosts also provide junk mail filtering, standard virus protection, and most importantly, a domain name for your Web site.
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Web hosting service
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to provide their own websites accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own for use by their clients as well as providing Internet connectivity, typically in a data center. Webhosts can also provide data center space and connectivity to the Internet for servers they do not own to be located in their data center, called colocation.
Service scope
The scopes of hosting services vary widely. The most basic is webpage and small-scale file hosting, where files can be uploaded via File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or a Web interface. The files are usually delivered to the Web "as is" or with little processing. Many Internet service providers (ISPs) offer this service for free to their subscribers. People can also obtain Web page hosting from other, alternative service providers. Personal web site hosting is typically free, advertisement-sponsored, or cheap. Business web site hosting often has a higher expense.
Single page hosting is generally sufficient only for personal web pages. A complex site calls for a more comprehensive package that provides database support and application development platforms (e.g. PHP, Java, and ASP.NET). These facilities allow the customers to write or install scripts for applications like forums and content management. For e-commerce, SSL is also required.
The host may also provide an interface control panel (e.g. cPanel, Hosting Controller, Plesk or others) for managing the Web server and installing scripts as well as other services like e-mail. Control panels and web interfaces have been causing some controversy lately as Web.com claims that it holds patent rights to the hosting technology with its 19 patents. Hostopia, a large wholesale host, recently purchased a license to use that technology from web.com for 10% of retail revenues. Web.com recently sued Go Daddy as well for similar patent infringement .
Some hosts specialize in certain software or services (e.g. e-commerce). They are commonly used by larger companies to outsource network infrastructure to a hosting company. To find a web hosting company, there are searchable directories that can be used. One must be extremely careful when searching for a new company due to the fact that many of the people promoting service providers are actually affiliates and the reviews are biased.
Hosting reliability and uptime
Hosting uptime refers to the percentage of time the host is accessible via the internet. Many providers state that they aim for a 99.9% uptime, but there may be server restarts and planned (or unplanned) maintenance in any hosting environment.
A popular claim from the popular hosting providers is '99% or 99.9% server uptime' but this often refers only to a server being powered on and doesn't account for network downtime. Real downtime can potentially be larger than the percentage guaranteed by the provider. Many providers tie uptime, and accessibility, into their own Service Level Agreement, or SLA. SLAs may or may not include refunds, or reduced costs if performance goals are not met. One must be extremely careful when selecting a new company and they should read all terms and conditions carefully. A potential customer should also check out the webhosting company's Acceptable Use Policy AUP in order to avoid potential cancellation of services due to activities that are considered a violation.
Types of hosting
Internet hosting services can run Web servers; see Internet hosting services.
Hosting services limited to the Web:
Free web hosting service: is free, (sometimes) advertisement-supported web hosting, and is often limited when compared to paid hosting.
Shared web hosting service: one's Web site is placed on the same server as many other sites, ranging from a few to hundreds or thousands. Typically, all domains may share a common pool of server resources, such as RAM and the CPU. A shared website may be hosted with a reseller.
Reseller web hosting: allows clients to become web hosts themselves. Resellers could function, for individual domains, under any combination of these listed types of hosting, depending on who they are affiliated with as a provider. Resellers' accounts may vary tremendously in size: they may have their own virtual dedicated server to a colocated server.
Virtual Dedicated Server: slicing up a server into virtual servers. each user feels like they're on their own dedicated server, but they're actually sharing a server with many other users. The users may have root access to their own virtual space.
Dedicated hosting service: the user gets his or her own Web server and gains full control over it (root access for Linux/administrator access for Windows); however, the user typically does not own the server. Another type of Dedicated hosting is Self-Managed or Unmanaged. This is usually the least expensive for Dedicated plans. The user has full administrative access to the box, which means the client is responsible for the security and maintenance of his own dedicated box.
Managed hosting service: the user gets his or her own Web server but is not allowed full control over it (root access for Linux/administrator access for Windows); however, they are allowed to manage their data via FTP or other remote management tools. The user is disallowed full control so that the provider can guarantee quality of service by not allowing the user the modify the server or potentially create configuration problems. The user typically does not own the server. The server is leased to the client.
Colocation web hosting service: similar to the dedicated web hosting service, but the user owns the colo server; the hosting company provides physical space that the server takes up and takes care of the server. This is the most powerful and expensive type of the web hosting service. In most cases, the colocation provider may provide little to no support directly for their client's machine, providing only the electrical, Internet access, and storage facilities for the server. In most cases for colo, the client would have his own administrator visit the data center on site to do any hardware upgrades or changes.
Clustered hosting: having multiple servers hosting the same content for better resource utilization.
Obtaining hosting
Web hosting is often provided as part of a general Internet access plan; there are many free and paid providers offering these services.
A customer needs to evaluate the requirements of the application to choose what kind of hosting to use. Such considerations include database server software, scripting software, and operating system. Most hosting providers provide Linux-based web hosting which offers a wide range of different software. A typical configuration for a Linux server is the LAMP platform: Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP/Perl/Python. The webhosting client may want to have other services, such as email for thier business domain, databases or multi-media services for streaming media.
Web hosting packages often include a Web Content Management System, so the end-user doesn't have to worry about the more technical aspects.
One can also use Google to find active webhosting message boards that may provide feedback on what type of webhosting company may suit his/her needs.