You will want to have email accounts for your website. For example, admin@ yourcompany.com and sales@yourcompany.com, etc…A POP (Post Office Protocol) Email Account is an email account hosted on your site and you will probably want more than one. Most hosting companies offer packages with different levels. For example, a beginner or starter package will have 1-5 email accounts, a middle of the road type account may offer up to 50 and a full business package may have unlimited email accounts available.

Website construction tools and/or Microsoft FrontPage extensions. You need to be able to design and develop your website. Many hosting companies offer templates and design tools. In addition they may offer FrontPage Extensions. FrontPage is a website design software program that is fairly easy to use and if your host allows you to upload your website onto the server.

Features:

Do you want to know who is visiting your website? What about what pages they visit or how long they stay online? What about click through rates? Any effective marketing plan or website plan needs to evaluate these statistics. This means you must find a hosting company that not only tracks this information for you but makes it easy for you to access and understand.

Marketing features like autoresponders and mailing list management are a fantastic feature but not all web hosting companies offer them. Take a good look at what your business needs before you sign on with a company. Sometimes a hosting company includes marketing features in your package and sometimes they are offered ala carte.

Security is important too. Look for a SSL, Secure Socket Layer, Secure Server. SSL is a protocol that allows for encrypted transmissions online. If you are collecting private information from your visitors, you will want this and you can include it in your privacy policy.

Some hosting plans offer shopping cart software integrated right into your account. This isn’t a must but it will save you a step if you offer products for purchase on your website

Members only areas require passwords but not all hosting companies offer this feature.

Choosing Your Hosting Plan

Nearly all hosting companies offer different types of hosting plans, including "shared" hosting and "dedicated" hosting. In addition, some hosts also offer a "virtual private" hosting option. Here are the details and benefits of each.

Shared Hosting:

Shared hosting or "virtual" hosting (which is different from "virtual private" hosting described below) is when the hosting company hosts your website on its own physical servers for a monthly fee. In this type of arrangement, the hosting company will also be serving other companies' websites from the same physical server. The hosting company is responsible for the technical details relating to keeping your site up and running, including server setup, bandwidth management, backups, and security.

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