There are many companies offering web hosting and domain registration services. Apart from the obvious variations in price, these differ widely in the following important areas:

• the performance of their processing and connectivity
• the reliability of the service
• the speed and quality of the response to enquiries and service requests
• the adequacy of their data backup arrangements
• the amounts of storage and bandwidth (data transfer allowed each month)

Below are a number of companies that we have found to give good service in all the above respects, as well as offering very competitive pricing. I’ve given the costs of the entry level package and a few key details:

Don’t get too stressed over the stats I’m quoting for these hosts - the bottom line is that ALL of them offer way more storage than you are likely to need. They also provide far more bandwidth than you will use, unless you are providing lots of video or multimedia content - and getting masses of hits. (See the  explanation below if you want to get an idea of how the figures relate to site performance).

If you are planning several sites and on a tight budget, the options that allow multiple domains on one account might be of interest.

GoDaddy.com Hosting Plans $6.95 per month, 5 GB storage, and 250 GB per month bandwidth. 500 email accounts. Domain name registration for $1.99. Good reliable service and excellent 24 hour telephone support. www.GoDaddy.com

Lunar Pages $6.95 per month, 350 MB storage, and 3500 GB per month bandwidth. Lifetime free domain name registration. You can host up to 10 domains on the one hosting plan. www.lunarpages.com

Speedfox $4.95 per month, 250 MB storage, and 2500 GB per month bandwidth. You can host unlimited numbers of domains on the one hosting plan. www.speedfox.com

Website Source $6.85 per month, 350 MB storage, and 3500 GB per month bandwidth. You can host unlimited numbers of domains on the one hosting plan. www.websitesource.com

Hostgator $6.95 per month, 50 GB storage, and 200 GB per month bandwidth. You can host unlimited domains on the one hosting plan. www.hostgator.com

Host Rocket $4.95 per month, 2000 MB storage, and unlimited bandwidth. You can host up to 10 domains on the one hosting plan. www.hostrocket.com

Hagenhosting $3.95 per month, 110 MB storage, and 1100 GB per month bandwidth. You can host up to 10 sub-domains on the one hosting plan. www.hagenhosting.com

As I said - all of these will most likely exceed your demands for both storage and bandwidth, but here is an indication of what the figures relate to in terms of what the site will be able to support:

To give a rough idea of the what the figures for storage and bandwidth mean in practical terms, 100 MB of storage is enough for approximately:

• 50,000 simple text-based web pages, or
• 1,000 good web-quality photos, or
• 2.5 hours of mp3 audio, or
• 50 minutes of compressed video

(obviously actual quantities will vary according to content and quality)

1000 GB bandwidth would allow for 10,000 times any of the above quantities (or some equivalent mixture) to be accessed each month.