As with everything in life all the choices we make have distinct advantages and disadvantages. The problem is that we don’t often see the disadvantages until after we have made our decision. This can also happen when we choose a web hosting provider. There are many web hosts that provide free hosting. Why pay for something you can get free? Free is great for hosting personal sites.

Why do these providers give you a free site? Your free site will attract visitors. You will invite visitors; your visitors in turn will invite still others and so on. Your free web hosting provider will place ads on your site. Some of your visitors may click in the ad links provided. This brings income for your free web host provider.

Now let’s say you don’t want just a personal site, but you want to make money from your site. Now a free site becomes a hindrance instead of a help.

In setting up a commercial site you will need more resources and freedom to use your site. You see you will need MySql databases. You may want to run PHP or CGI scripts. You may produce a squeeze page and try to get your customers to focus on your product. But there are other products being advertised as well, products from your web host. There could also be an issue with looking professional and being a trusted business.

If you need to run a web site as a commercial enterprise you will be far better off choosing paid web hosting. You will also need to choose the hosting package that will best suit your needs. Look at some of the benefits of a paid site.

1. Look far more professional. What looks better? yourname@yahoo.com or yourname@yoursitename.com Having your own email addresses will look much more professional. I personally don’t deal with marketers who use free email accounts. I always wonder if they are just a fly-by-night enterprise. Here today and gone tomorrow.

2. You will be able to use PHP and CGI scripts

3. You will have access to MySql databases. Most scripts today require a database. You may wish to use a blog script such as WordPress. With a paid web hosting account you will be able to.

4. You will also have far greater disk space available to you. If you run out of available space your web host can easily and painlessly increase your allotted amount.

5. You will have access to a powerful and easy to use control panel which will allow you to do things behind the scenes such as set up emails, databases and many other things.

These were just a few of the reasons why you need to choose a paid web hosting provider there are many more.

You can choose to start small and expand. This can be done painlessly as your hosting provider just increases the limits that have been set with the package you chose at first.

So looking back to our question to pay or not to pay. Free web hosting is great for personal and family sites. They are not great for anyone that wants to set up a serious internet business.

When you set up a new business you would need to make decisions as to the size shop or building required as well as what equipment you will need. A similar rule would apply in moving from one location to another

In starting a business you would need to have a business plan. Part of this plan would include looking over facilities available and how they would suit your needs. When choosing a web host you need to do the same. There are certain requirements you would make sure you have. You would also check out the location.

How much disk space do you need on the server?

How much room (disk space) do you need. Here it is wise to get whatever you can afford. Most websites will run on just a few MB. But it is wise to allow for future expansion. Do you plan to run a membership site with lots of downloads? Here you may find that 500MB may mot even be enough. You will find that there are plenty of hosting providers that offer up to 1GB for very reasonable rates.

What is Bandwidth?

Basically it is the uploading and downloading from your site. Each time you get a visitor to your site they view your site page or pages depending on how many they view. Each time a page is downloaded or viewed by your visitor they are using bandwidth. Hosting companies will limit the amount of bandwidth you use. This information has appeared on your visitors computer because their computer has downloaded the information. This downloading is calculated and is called bandwidth. The more bandwidth you have the more surfers you can have without having to pay additional fees. You should always be able to upgrade to a bigger package and get more. Several companies also offer unlimited accounts.

Do You Need Databases?

The short answer is yes. In fact you will need to make sure that you can run a number of databases. There are many web applications that require a database to run. Let’s say you want to have a Blog on your site. You could download the free script from WordPress. To install it you need a database. There are so many applications that require databases that you should consider at least getting 5 or 6 available as a minimum.

Control Panel. Which Is Best?

What control panel is in use? The control panel is very important. Here is where you will be able to do all the things required to make you site run the way you want it to. Here too will set up all the e-mail accounts you want to run from you site. This is also where you will be able to set up your databases when required.There are two control panels that I like. Cpanel. This is a feature rich control panel and is very popular. The other that I find the simplest to use is Direct Admin. If you are choosing a new hosting provider it is always wise to see if you can test drive the control panel.

Other Things You will Need From You Host

There are added extras that you should be expecting from your hosting provider. a vital one is a site creator. Does the hosting account come with a simple to use site builder? One of the easiest to use in the business is the Drag And Drop site creator. This is a very powerful creator being able to generate vibrant PHP sites.

Several hosts also supply a members area with marketing information and free of charge downloads. Many of these downloadable products can be useful in setting up your new site.

At the beginning I mentioned location. Unlike finding the right shop in which location is everything. In choosing the right web host you need to create the location. This is done by search engine optimization. Search engine optimization is only a small part of getting traffic to your site. There are many things you can and should do to get that traffic to your site. Your success also hinges on the traffic you create for your site.