When you get into looking at website hosting, it can really be confusing. There are lots of strange terms and the plans and features available can make you dizzy. Which kind of web hosting package is the best to choose?
One of the most confusing web site hosting terms is probably bandwidth. It can mean a few different things. It can mean the size of the connection to your web server and it can mean how much data transfer is allowed. It can also mean how much room a rock band uses when they perform on stage. Ok, I was just kidding about the last one but lead guitarists do need a lot of room to run around, it seems.
When you are talking about web site hosting, bandwidth will primarily relate to data transfer. The physical Internet connection to the server is also important. Let me talk about that for a second. You can think of an Internet connection like a water pipe in your house. You would want a large pipe connected to your server to that it can handle traffic easily and not get backed up or overloaded. Make sure your web hosting can handle those traffic spikes when you get them.
So bandwidth is data transfer or how much data is going through the pipe. It is a bit like the water company that comes to check the meter on your house every month or two. So how high that meter goes depends on how much traffic your web site gets and what kind of data is being sent. If you are a rock band and have a lot of audio and video files on your website, then those are larger data chunks versus an accounting firm that just has some text and a few images on their web site. I guess rock bands are a bit more exciting than accounting firms. So when people go to a web site that has all the audio and video files on it, then that is more data going through the pipe.
The two kinds of bandwidth that come with web hosting plans are allowed bandwidth and unlimited bandwidth. If you go with an allowed bandwidth plan, you will get charged if you go over that allowed amount of data transfer. Unlimited bandwidth plans will not charge you for use of bandwidth.
Hosts with fixed, allowed bandwidth do often give you some advantages. For instance, they sometimes offer some kind of management and they will have better uptime and be more reliable. You should be able to login to some sort of web control panel where you can see how much bandwidth you currently are using for that month. Some website hosts will let you pay in advance for some bandwidth for a reduced cost if you think you may go over for that month. Pre-paying would be cheaper than having a bandwidth overage.
The website hosting companies that provide plans with unlimited bandwidth are cheaper but their reliability can typically be lower than more expensive web hosting plans. These hosts typically want a lot of customers in order to turn a profit since they pay for the bandwidth costs themselves. Offering unlimited bandwidth is an incentive to get more customers. These web hosting plans are great for sites that are not mission critical websites and they are nicely priced at about $10 a month or less.
With web hosting plans, the bottom line is that you get what you pay for. If it is important that your website stays running, then you will want to go with a web site hosting package that is not the cheapest one out there. Website hosting that is higher priced will actually be more worth it because your website will always be running. If it was down all the time, you would be losing money. These more expensive hosting plans may or may not offer you unlimited bandwidth but it is an important thing to look at when deciding on a website hosting package. If they do not offer unlimited bandwidth hosting, then be sure you know what the overage charges are.
I wish you good luck with finding a suitable web site hosting package and finding the right size rock band on stage!