Checklist for choosing the correct PHP Hosting provider

PHP Hosting service is basically a type of shared web hosting. Today there are more number of users using shared services than any other hence being the most popular web hosting services in the industry. There are other reasons too for its popularity. Probably the most considered reason is that it falls under the category of affordable web hosting services. This means that these packages can be availed at affordable price, which I believe is crucial when you are low on budget during the initial days.

Even the new web hosting companies offer shared web hosting services, hence these services are not hard to find. PHP hosting packages are basically for small and medium sized websites which require low resources such as bandwidth and disk space. One must be careful when choosing an Affordable Web Hosting provider for your website. Most of the newbie web hosting companies offer unlimited web hosting (atleast they claim so) inorder to attract customers. Mind that there is nothing known as unlimited in the practical world. This is just a gimmick played by companies to build its customer base. It is better to stay away from such providers.

One would be able to choose an appropriate host if you understand how shared web hosting actually works. As the name itself suggest, the server is shared between multiple users. Similar to you, many websites are hosted on the same server. In the web hosting terminology, it is called as the web hosting account. Multiple such accounts are created that are assigned some resources of the server. The number of such accounts are hard to define as it depends on the type of physical server on which the host has used. Some unprofessional hosting companies tend to over sell the server, meaning they overload the server. This results in bad performance of the websites hosted on such a server. The server may happen to face downtime too. It is better to avoid such signing up with such companies before hand. It is better to do some research before choosing a host.

PHP Hosting accounts are created on Linux web servers, hence security you get would be better than the Windows servers. Still you must check with the host, the kind of security measures taken in Data Centers.

The very important aspect to look for when choosing a host is the uptime guarantee offered by the hosting company. Being a newbie, most users tend to overlook this aspect. A web hosting provider offering an uptime guarantee of more than 99.95%, can be considered for hosting your website.

Next factors are the bandwidth and disk space offered by the PHP Host. Before looking out for a host, it is recommended to do some homework before approaching the host or choosing a package. You should be aware of the total size of the website and an assumption of the traffic that would reach your website. This can be helpful to choose an appropriate package. Also, check if the host offers flexible web hosting packages. This is important, because as your website grows older over the Internet, you would get more number of visitors, hence the resources allocated with your current package would fall short. Then, it would be an essential factor when you upgrade your web hosting package.

It is usually difficult to calculate the bandwidth precisely, that would be required by your website. Though there can be an approximate assumption that can be considered when choosing a hosting package. The hosting companies usually calculates it from their end and assign certain bandwidth to a hosting package. This figure is somewhat more than that has been calculated though.

Most of the PHP hosts would offer other features as well with the hosting account. One of them is the Email accounts that are usually required by many websites. With a shared hosting package, you are usually allowed a single email account.

A web hosting control panel is one of the features that most of the web hosts usually offer. Though, it is upto the user whether to order or not. But, it is useful to manage your website and the web hosting account with a control panel. cPanel is one of the most popular control panel that is widely offered with a PHP hosting plan. This control panel includes number of other addons that are free. Fantastico is one such tool included in cPanel which is very helpful for users. This is one of the feature of this control panel which is most appreciated by webmasters and the normal users.