Choosing a web host.

Planning to start a website on your favorite hobby or for your business? Finding a good web host will get you one step closer to making the website of your dreams.

This is a list of features that the web host your looking at/for should have to matter what:

For Free web hosts:
- At least 200 mb of bandwidth per month.
- 20 mb of disk space.
- A way to upload files.

If they don't meet any of those simple requirements try looking for a new host, don‘t even bother signing up no matter how many extra features they offer. If you really think about it those requirements aren't that high. Even Geocities or Tripod meets those requirements!

For Paid web hosting:
- At least 1gb of bandwidth per month.
- 50-100 mb of disk space.
- FTP
- A CGI-Bin folder
- PHP or ASP.
- Domain name hosting.
- A POP email account or WebMail.
- SSI

Need a couple reasons to switch from free web hosting to paid web hosting? These are 5 of the most common differences between free web hosting accounts and paid web hosting accounts that I could think of. There are couple of paid hosts that don't offer everything that free hosts have and vice versa. I realize that there are hosts with cheap plans that don't allow domain hosting and you should avoid using them. A domain name always makes your website look more professional.

1. Most free hosts put banner advertisements or put pop-up or pop-unders, most paid hosts don't.
2. You get better and faster support with a paid hosting account than with a free hosting account.
3. When you pay for web hosting you get more features; like MySQL, PHP, htaccess, SSI, and a CGI folder.
4. Free web hosting is more unreliable than paid web hosting.
5. You can host your own domain name.