Web Hosting Packages - Which Should You Choose?

So - you need a web hosting package for your new website or series of planned websites. You're in luck! There are at least 10,000 companies and individuals offering a barrage of hosting packages all guaranteed to suit your every hosting need. Now, it's up to you to determine what type of web hosting package will work best for you.

Generally speaking, there are four different types of web hosting packages available: personal plans, reseller hosting plans, VPS packages and dedicated server hosting plans. While there are a multitude of differences within each package type; in general, these are the basic hosting packages available.

A personal hosting plan is generally setup for you to maintain one website. These hosting plans often offer supple disk space and bandwidth - more than most accounts containing a single website would ever think of using. Sometimes web hosts will allow you to manage multiple websites from your personal account; only you do not have the capability, often times, to manage each website with it's own unique control panel. Rather, you will have to manage each website from within the file directory and only your main website will have a control panel. Typically these personal plans are affordable - where you can find a suitable package for under $10 per month and as low as $2-$3 per month. A personal hosting plan is on a shared server, meaning that other websites are hosted on the same server as your website or websites; this shouldn't be too much of a deterrent if you find a reputable and reliable hosting company.

Reseller hosting is somewhat similar to a personal hosting plan in the way that it is on a shared server. If you purchase a reseller hosting account, your websites will be competing with other websites for system resources, but again, if it's a good hosting company, you won't have to worry about frequent outages and downtime due to server overcrowding. A reseller account is not only good for reselling hosting services yourself, they are a wonderful asset for webmasters on a budget that run multiple websites. A reseller account typically offers a unique control panel for each website and a master control panel so that you can manage each website that is on your account. With decent packages ranging in price between $20-$50 per month, you are sure to save some money on web hosting if you have multiple websites that could benefit from the option of having their own unique control panel.

VPS web hosting, also known as a virtual private server, a virtual dedicated server or semi-dedicated server; is a step below an actual dedicated hosting account traditionally without the high cost of having a dedicated server. VPS hosting packages differ from reseller hosting accounts because they are on their own partition within a server; they have their own operating system and are not as susceptible to problems that other websites might cause that are hosted on the same server, only on a different partition. A VPS plan will often allow you root access to afford you the option of adding specialized software that many reseller hosting plans cannot; giving you the freedom to run your own applications in your personal hosting environment. VPS plans are usually more expensive than reseller plans with average packages running from $30-$70 per month.

Dedicated hosting plans are for the full time webmaster that needs ultimate dependability or runs process/bandwidth intense websites. These offer the most opportunity in terms of control as you almost always have root access; though depending on the particular package you've purchased from your hosting company - you may have to deal with server setup and management yourself. If you're not familiar with setting up an operating system, firewalls and server configurations you will need to purchase a fully managed dedicated hosting plan: these cost more but are absolutely necessary for the security and dependability of your websites if you cannot otherwise handle these administrative tasks. Price wise there are large gaps in dedicated server pricing - you can find some for as cheap as $80 per month all the way to $400 per month; really depending on your hardware and network needs and the hosting provider that you choose.

In conclusion, there are a lot of different web hosting packages available; to save yourself the time and headache of having to moving all of your websites to another package, you should choose a plan that will meet your long term requirements the first time around.

By James Drakner. 16hosts.com offers affordable web hosting packages with cash back rebates for the 16 top web hosting providers. http://www.16hosts.com