Affordable web hosting is not only defined by the monetary cost, but also by the opportunity cost and the time you’ll spend getting a web hosting company that doesn’t do what you need. You’ll see at the end of this article who I use and here are a few of the things I evaluate when considering a web hosting company to go with.

Web hosting companies usually give you more than enough space to do what you need to. Unless you are trying to duplicate Youtube, you won’t have any problems with the amount of space required. Several web hosting companies now even offer “unlimited” space on the server. Although this is theoretically impossible, web hosting companies are all looking to beat their competition and this is one of the ways that they do this.

Another component that may influence your decision on what web hosting company to go with is the amount of bandwidth that they will allocate for you. If you stream a lot of video or people are downloading large files from your web server, this may be a problem. However, if you consider that most web hosts give you several terabytes of bandwidth, this shouldn’t be an issue.

One of the things I look for with an affordable web hosting company is how their technical support is and where their technical support is located. I prefer a company whose employees speak the same language as I do without accents I have difficulty understanding. Technical competency is important as well, but with the relative simplicity of web servers and these accounts today, this isn’t a very big deal either.

The control panel that you’ll use to manage your account should be web based so you can access it from anywhere. The most common control panel that I’ve seen recently is called cpanel. This allows you to configure all of your email addresses, directories, domain names, software, ftp access, etc. Basically anything you’d need to do on the web hosting account you’ll be able to do from a central location, your cpanel.

Affordable web hosting companies should also provide you with a free domain name which will most likely use as the main account name. If you’re like me and plan on hosting multiple domain names and projects on the same server, you should still take advantage of a free domain name because hey, free domain name.

Installing web based software is not necessarily difficult, but there are enough things that require manual intervention that having a good software installer built into the web host is very convenient and makes the process of installing software easy. These software installation scripts are usually accessible through the cpanel. You can usually install any number of software packages including blogs, content management systems, ecommerce storefronts, bulletin board systems or forums, and even things like an email autoresponder system. Your website doesn’t have to have only one of these, you can install these into their own directories as well and interlink them from your main navigation bar.

Getting setup with affordable web hosting has never been easier. This is a project that you can undertake quickly and easily. One recommendation I have is to not overanalyze these web hosting companies too much. I’d visit some web hosting forums and see what real people recommend.

In addition to writing articles similar to this one, I also promote affordable web hosting and bluehost coupon. I have started podcasting again. You can find me by searching for Brian Armstrong in iTunes.