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Wednesday January 16, 11:44 PM ET

How To Choose A Web Hosting Company

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of hosting companies out there. They come in all price ranges, and with all kinds of bells and whistles. Here are some things you may want to look for in a hosting company, especially if your website is part of your overall marketing plan to sell products or services.

* Money Back Guarantee - I put this first, because if you are unhappy with your hosting site, you'll want assurances that you'll get your money back.

* 24/7 Customer Technical Support - This is critical. Find out if they mean "there's voicemail or email 24-hours-a-day" or if they mean, "we will answer the phone and help you 24-hours-a-day"

* Control Panel - The Control Panel where you control all aspects of your account, such as managing email accounts, reading statistics, and configuring autoresponders. Make sure your hosting company has a centralized control panel for your management needs.

* Website Statistics - From a marketing perspective, it's important to know who is visiting your site and what pages they read. Your hosting company should keep track of all of this information for you, and present it in an easy to read format. Make sure your statistics are updated on a daily basis, and that you can configure the display to show you by day, by week, by month or by year. You can learn more about how to read and interpret your statistics here: http://www.passionforbusiness.com/articles.htm

* CGI - CGI stands for the "Common Gateway Interface" and is a protocol through which web pages interact with scripts on a server. Your hosting company should allow you to install and run CGI scripts your account. They may also offer you some pre-installed CGI scripts for free as part of your hosting package, such as a message board or email forms.

* POP Email Accounts - A POP (Post Office Protocol) Email Account is an email account hosted on your site. Your hosting company should allow you to have more than one POP account, so that you can set up email addresses for all your needs. For example, clients requesting information about a workshop can send email to workshop@mydomain.com, while clients can send their homework to homework@mydomain.com. Also make sure your hosting company support email forwarding.

* Autoresponders - Autoresponders allow a visitor to send an email to a specific email address and automatically receive a reply. For example, if you have a FAQ, people can send an email to faq@mydomain.com and automatically receive the FAQ list in their email inbox.

Source: Karyn Greenstreet is a Self Employment Expert

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