| Domain Hosting Basics When it comes to starting an internet business, the choice of domain hosting is an extremely important one. It is important that your potential customers be able to find your web site when they are ready to buy, or when they have a question about your product or service. Having your web site available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, is a must in today’s highly competitive world. There are many choices when it comes to domain hosting. Some of the older, well established domain hosting companies host literally thousands of web sites on their servers, while other domain hosting companies host far fewer. The most important thing for the internet entrepreneur to do is choose a reputable, trustworthy domain hosting company. When it comes to choosing domain hosting, it is important to understand the various types of domain hosting that are available. The different types of domain hosting include: Shared hosting – Shared hosting, also known as virtual web hosting, the same physical web server provides space for many different web sites. Depending on the domain hosting service, the same server can host hundreds or even thousands of web sites. Some things to consider with shared domain hosting are: Will the response time of the server deteriorate as more and more web sites are added? Is the processor on the web server powerful enough to provide reasonable response times? Does the domain hosting service have backup servers in place in the event of an outage or hardware failure on the primary server? Does the domain hosting service have a solid backup plan in place to keep the web sites up in the event of an emergency? Is the price reasonable? Most shared domain hosting can be purchased from $5 to $20 per month. Dedicated hosting – The opposite of shared domain hosting is dedicated domain hosting. With a dedicated domain hosting arrangement, the customer is assigned a specific web server that is used only for that web site. With this type of arrangement, the customer has the option to host either single or multiple web sites, to modify the configuration of the server, and to handle a greater amount of traffic. Some things to consider before agreeing to a dedicated domain hosting arrangement include: The price – Dedicated domain hosting generally starts at around $50 per month, and the average is $200-$500 per month, depending on the number of web sites hosted on the server and their complexity. Does your agreement offer you the ability to host multiple web sites and domain names. Even those businesses with a single domain name should opt for the multiple hosting option. This will allow your business to grow and change over time without changing the location of your domain hosting service. | 
