Following
the price drop in computer equipments especially the storage
prices, web hosting companies would be able to offer low
cost hosting solutions to the customers. This is good
news to customers where the price of typical hosting for
low traffic sites has dropped from HKD 200 to around HKD
80 or even less.
When you're going to put your web page up on the Internet,
you need a hosting service provider. They range from free
services with few options (the drawback to most free hosting
services is that they are funded by advertising placed
on your site) up to expensive business hosting and even
hosting you run yourself. Which option you choose depends
upon how you plan to use your Web site, how much you want
to spend, and how much time you want to spend maintaining
the servers that make up the web site.
So, how to choose your web hosting service providers?
If you have your own web page, it would be a relatively
simple process in your journey in having your web presence.
Typically, these are the factors/features you need to
consider:
- Price (setup fees required?)
- Web space (how many MB do you want?)
- Email (how many accounts and MB do you need?)
- Server power (how many clients are shared?)
- Support
- Web control panel
- CGI Access (ASP, PHP etc)
- Database (MySQL, MSSQL etc)
- Bandwidth
- Backup
You can prioritize the list above according to your needs.
Most people put Price as their 1st priority but before
going for the cheapest web hosting provider, you need
to make some comparisons in their offerings.
If you don¡¦t have a web page and would like a one-stop-shop
to do it for you, you¡¦d need to access their capability
in Web Design. As some vendors outsource this task to
freelancers, this may affect the quality and schedule.
One (obvious) tips is to ask the vendor to send you their
design profile.
If you are looking for more stuff such as an e-business
website, the process will be more complicated and it will
be discussed in our next release.
If you have any questions or would like to know what MOS5
can offer, please feel free to email us 
