In this online era, more and more people want to come up with their own web site. Some people want to make web site just for hobby while some want to start their small business online. Is really a hosting account required for making website? Well, not really. People can make their website using free web log platform available like blogger.com and wordpress.com. These blogging platforms are fine if you are making website just for hobby or fun but if you are making website for your online business then it's recommended that you use your own hosting account.

Since you are just starting your online business, you definitely don't want to invest much money in your hosting account. So basically you want cheap web hosting. It doesn't mean that all cheap web hosting are not good. There are many web hosts available that are good and cheap as well. In this article, I will guide you how to select affordable low cost web hosting and what to look for while selecting web hosting account.

There are many features you should look for selecting low cost web hosting but it depends on your requirements also. Here are few features which almost are common while selecting web hosting company.

Disk Space & Bandwidth

Fist thing is a disk space and bandwidth. This is really your choice. Don't select the company which provides more disk space and more bandwidth. Now a days, computer hardware and internet connections are very cheap. So many hosting companies can give you a good deal with disk space and bandwidth. You should first decide your requirements and should check that which hosting company is providing your requirement at the cheapest rate with other benefits also. It might happen that the hosting company providing more disk space and bandwidth is not reliable or not good in support.

Domains Hosting

Affordable web hosting company should provide a unlimited domains and unlimited sub domains hosting. Well, if you are not going to host more than one website than it is fine to select hosting with limited domains hosting but it should at least provide unlimited sub domains hosting. Most of the hosting companies provide unlimited domains hosting.

Mail, MySQL & FTP Accounts

Low cost hosting company should also provide enough mail, mysql and FTP user accounts. You might need to give separate mail ID to each of your employee in future. For file uploading also, you may need different FTP accounts with different folder access. So keep accounting also in mind while selecting hosting company.

Maximum Control of Your Account

You should have full control over your account. Hosting company should give you as much control as much possible. Some of these accesses include SSH (Secure Shell) access, .htaccess file access, your own php.ini settings, cron job, perl and python support. Some of these terms you might not understand now but in future you will definitely need one of these accesses for your web site. So check for that before purchasing.

One-Click Install through Control Panel

You should be able to install many open source softwares like WordPress, phpBB, MediaWiki, Zencart etc.. using one click from the control panel. If hosting company is not offering this facility than you will have to install it manually but this feature is common with most of hosting companies.

Support & Reliability

Support and reliability is the main thing you should check. You can compromise with all other features but with this you can't. Without an account how will you know whether hosting company is reliable or not. Simple! Take a help of Google. Look out for that hosting company review. Check what is average up time and how is support. With low cost hosting company, you can't expect phone support but it should at least offer mail support with a reasonable response time. If you are getting phone support then it's an added plus point.

Money Back Guarantee

Make sure that company is providing money back guarantee of at least 2 months because in one month you can't judge the service and support.