How to Obtain Small Business Web Hosting

Is it time for your business to take the leap to the worldwide community that is the Internet? It is easier than ever now to obtain small business web hosting services to make the most of your online presence. With a huge number of suppliers and thousands of tools available for your use, it may be overwhelming at first, but it's really very easy to obtain small business web hosting and give your company an online presence, making it both more visible and more competitive across a wider audience than you thought possible.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Decide on a domain name. This will be the primary address of your company on the Internet (ie. www.ehow.com). When choosing a domain name, try abbreviating common words in order to shorten it. For example, if your name is United States Green Automobile Federation, consider a name such as www.usgreenautos.com so it will be easy to remember. It doesn't matter who providers your small business web hosting services if no one can find you.

2. Evaluate the needs of your online presence. Different companies provide different small business web hosting services, and you want to make sure that all your needs are met. Will you need an integrated shopping cart for selling products online? Will you need blogging capability? Will you need multiple domains pointing to the same site, or even multiple sites? Will you need to pay by the month? Does it include email? Will you need lots of bandwidth to serve multimedia files? These all need to be taken into consideration before you make a commitment.

3. Research the various companies that provide small business web hosting services. There are quite a few, such as GoDaddy, HostGator, Yahoo!, and more. They all have their pros and cons, and their best way to evaluate which is best for you is to read online reviews posted by their users. The main things to check are how much downtime they experience, how prompt their tech support is, and what tools they have to offer your web developer.

4. Make your purchase. At the time of checkout, you will determine your web address, your billing cycle, and the package you will be subscribing to. When you complete the transaction, the web space for your new site will become quickly available for you or your web developer. You will receive FTP information and access to your small business web hosting control panel to begin tweaking with the tools and adding content.

Tips & Warnings

• Most providers of small business web hosting services offer a discounted rate if you are willing to pay for one to three years up front.
• After purchasing a name, it may take up to a few days for the DNS to filter across the Internet and for your site to become fully available.