Getting started with your own website isn’t a step to be taken lightly. But it isn’t so important a decision that you can’t take it back or switch to a new company at any point in time. There are a few things about any web hosting company that you can use to compare one against another.

Most hosting companies offer most space than you could probably ever use unless you’re hosting some serious video content. Several web hosting companies now offer “unlimited” space. Obviously trying to test the upper limits of this supposed “unlimited” disk space would require some serious uploading and bandwidth. Not enough disk space will most likely be the least of your worries, even if you are hosting extensive video content.

Bandwidth is the amount of files that are uploaded and or downloaded from the webserver on a regular basis. If you have a video on your website that is 10MB and you upload it once and it gets downloaded 99 more times, you’ll have 100 times at 10MB each or basically 1 GB worth of bandwidth (1000MB).

Customer support is only important when you need it. So, if you consider yourself a techie to the point you’d be able to take care of your own server or account and things that go along with it, you may not need support. However, if you do need support, you’ll want to setup with a company that has great support. You’ll be glad you did.

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.

Creating a fully functional website these days is pretty easy. One of the easiest ways to do this is through WordPress which is included in just about all of the cPanel software installation options. There are a lot of other options including ecommerce, content management systems, bulletin board systems, and a few other types of websites. All of these are pretty easy to install.

Don’t think too much about web hosting. It is important, but the more you spend time analyzing the many facets of web hosting, the further away you’ll get from your project. Plan on spending about $5 to $10 per month and making sure you have all of your minimum requirements met along with a free domain. Read reviews as well, but be aware that the author may be basing his claim solely on which web hosting company is paying him the most money for promotion. Good luck with your search.

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.