Web Hosting Features

Looking at what the hosting company provides is a extremely important step when choosing a hosting platform. If you are running a Content Management System that requires software the hosting company does not provide, well you most likely bought a years worth of hosting nothing. Take the time to see what each company offers and judge for yourself. Here are a few pointers:

1. Some hosting companies still do not offer SSH. SSH allows you to connect to the server in a secure environment. Without SSH, if you need to run commands from a command prompt (terminal) you won't be able to. SSH is extremely important and any hosting company that does not offer it, should be avoided.

2. Compare the disk space and the bandwidth usage from a variety of companies. If most shared hosting setups are offering 300GB and one is offering 2TB, most likely the 2TB company is overselling its servers. What this means is they are placing more users on each machine then other companies. They do this to entice you to join by offering HUGE amounts of disk space and bandwidth, when in fact it is just a marketing ploy to get you to join.

3. Look at the software they offer. Most shared hosting companies, trying to cater to as many people as possible, will load a ton of software on their machines. PHP, Coldfusion,Ruby, etc... Look at your needs, if your web software (wordpress) only needs PHP to run, then having Coldfusion and Ruby is pointless. While this isn't a deal breaker, most companies at a minimum will offer support for PHP, MySQL, PhpMyAdmin. If you only need PHP, this is perfectly doable.

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