Here is an exhaustive list of the web hosting features that the various web hosting plans available on the Internet today may offer:

• Supported Operating Systems - ISP servers either have Linux (Unix) or a Microsoft Windows-based operating system (usually Windows Server 2003 or later) that runs the servers. Windows-based servers usually run Microsoft's IIS Web Server. Linux-based web servers include Red Hat, Apache, and several others. For many webmasters that do NOT require any sort of specific application environments (like PHP or Perl, for example), it will be immaterial as to which operating system runs on the ISP servers. However, if you require a specific application environment that is only supported by either Unix or Windows, then your selection of ISP and associated web hosting plan is critical based on this operating system requirement.

• Domain Reservation and Registration - Your ISP will usually charge you a separate fee (over and above your recurring monthly hosting fee), for both procuring and then registering a unique domain name (e.g., mysite.com). The fee is usually a one-time nominal fee. You will usually have the option of registering your new domain name for 1 year or longer. Given that you will have to pay a renewal fee for the domain each year (again, a small nominal fee), you may get a better deal price-wise, by registering your domain for multiple years, from the outset.

• Sub-Domain Support - A sub-domain is a convenient mechanism for creating memorable website URL addresses for various portions of a website. For example, if you have a domain www.mysite.com, and you want to create a separate portion of a website dedicated to trees, you could create a sub-domain called trees.mysite.com. Having the ability to create sub-domains off your main website, allows you to logically partition these website into separate portions, but obviates the need to create a new domain name for each of these site portions. You can effectively create separate website addresses within your domain, by utilizing the sub-domain feature, without incurring a new domain cost for each. However, the drawback to this is that the new website will still have your original domain name associated with it.

• Email Support - All web hosting plans offer Email services. However, each web hosting plan offers different types of Email service and with different limitations. Here are some of the Email services offered by the various hosting plans:
  • Number of Email Addresses - Some hosting plans put strict limits on the number of Email addresses that you can establish with a domain, while others offer an unlimited number of Email Addresses.

  • Email Forwarding - The ability to route an Email to an alternate Email Address, when an Email to a specific Email Address is received.

  • Email Aliases - Email aliases permit Email users to send you mail without having to specify a specific machine on which you receive mail. For example, if John Smith reads mail at jsmith@dept.ti.lsu.edu and he creates an alias of jsmith@luse.edu, people can send electronic mail to jsmith@lsu.edu at the email will automatically be forwarded to jsmith@dept.ti.lsu.edu automatically and transparently. If John Smith replies to such an Email, his recipient will see the Email as coming from jsmith@lsu.edu.

  • Webmail - This is a useful feature which allows you to access your Email functionaility from a web-based browser, which means that you can access you Email from any computer that is connected to the Internet. The alternative to this feature is to have a dedicated software application installed on your computer to gain access to your mail.

  • Catch-All Email - Any Email that is targeted for your domain, but not a valid Email username within that domain, will get delivered to a "catch-all" username Email addresses and will be delivered to you, as opposed to getting rejected by your Email server and returned to the sender as a bounced Email. For example, let's say your Email Address is jsmith@mysite.com, and someone you know accidentally sends an email to jsmitt@mysite.com. In this scenario, since the domain, mysite.com, was specified correctly, but the username was incorrectly specified, the Email will still be delivered to a "catch-all" Email Address that is selected by you (maybe you might want to call it catch-all@mysite.com.

  • Autoresponders - This powerful feature allows an automated follow-up Email message to be sent to a person that requested information about your product or service, via a blank Email sent to a specifically allocated Email Address of yours. Autoresponders can act in a simple Email "fax-back" fashion as described above, or can be more sophisticated in that they return varying Emails based on keywords or phrases that are contained within the initial Email sent to you. Further, Autoresponders can get quite elaborate in that they can capture Email Addresses, and send out regularly scheduled sales information to this person, as defined by you in an Autoresponder setup mode.

  • Spam Protection - An ISP can provide spam protection which causes spam Emails to be filtered out from your displayable Emails, thus saving clutter and valuable reading time.

  • SMTP Email Services - This allows you to send outbound Email from your ISP's mail servers, but with your own domain name as your Email reference. For example, if you are using ISP.NET as your host and Email server, but you have your own domain name, let's say mysite.com, hosted on ISP.NET's servers, John Smith can have an Email Address of jsmith@mysite.com, and doesn't need to have an Email Address of jsmith@isp.net.

• Storage Space - Storage space is the amount of disk space allocated to you, when you have an ISP host your website. This storage space is allocated for any pages of your website, any database storage required by your website, and any space used to store your Emails. Typically, the amount of space allocated to you is measured in terms of Gigabytes (GB). All hosting plans come with a default amount of storage space allocated for you. This default storage amount is included with your monthly hosting fee. If you should exceed this maximum, usually the hosting company will allocate you more storage, but for an additional fee.

• Bandwidth Usage Limit OR Monthly Data Transfer Limit - The ISP of your webhosting plan, plays for the infrastructure to access the Internet. This cost to the ISP includes all sorts of things including trunk lines, routers, modems, etc. Given this cost, the hosting fees charged to you defer these costs. The hosting plan will allow you to have a maximum monthly Bandwidth Usage Limit (also known as a Monthly Data Transfer Limit), which is usually a high number. This imposes a maximum amount of data that can flow to/from (that is, bidirectional) your website. This amount of data is measured in terms of Gigabytes (GB). Hence, any requests to your website from users or data returned to your users from your website is applied to this maximum limit. Again, if should exceed this maximum, the hosting company (ISP) will charge you an additional fee, based on the consumption of this additional bandwidth.

• Managed Servers - Some ISP's will supply dedicated managed servers to you. These are servers that are provided by the ISP and strictly dedicated to your websites. These servers are monitored, managed, and maintained by the ISP for you. These types of plans cost significantly more than standard hosting plans, which have your websites reside on servers that are shared by others.

• VPS (Virtual Private Server - A VPS is similar to the Managed Server concept, in that the ISP provides a dedicated server with full root privilege access. However, it is the responsibility of the website owner to monitor, manage, and maintain the server.

• Hosting of External Domains - Some hosting plans permit the hosting of external domains; that is, domains that were purchased outside the sphere of the ISP.

• Website Builder Tools - The latest rage in the web hosting realm, is the availability of website building tools. These tools, which very often come standard with a web hosting plan, provide WYSIWYG ("What You See Is What You Get") tools, that allow you to create your website using these graphical tools. No knowledge of underlying code (e.g., HTML) is required to build websites using these tools. Some of these tools are quite powerful, and allow you to create sophisticated, graphically superior websites. Having these tools available can obviate the need for contracting a web designer to build your website, although many people still get intimidated by these tools.

• Photo Gallery - Some hosting plans provide you with a gallery of pictures that can be used when building your website.

• SSL Certificates - The ability to obtain SSL certificates from your ISP, enables you to have a "https//" prefix in your website address, which means that the displayed web page is encrypted (a padlock icon will display in the browser), and impervious to hacker intrusion or data capture on the Internet. It will cost a nominal fee to purchase these SSL cerficates, and they are typically used in conjunction with payment pages on a website, where credit card information needs to be typed in by the end user.

• Online Payment Support - Many web hosting plans offer an addendum to the basic monthly hosting fee, which enables your website to have online payment support which includes things like Credit Card processing, interface to electronic payment processor Paypal, and interfaces to delivery organizations such as UPS.

• Shopping Cart Support - Many web hosting plans offer an addendum to the basic monthly hosting fee, which enables your website to have Shopping Cart functionality for making purchases. To be able to include such support into your website is an extremely powerful feature, which will enhance the shopping experience for any users of your website.

• Marketing Vouchers - Some hosting plans come with free PPC (Pay Per Click) marketing vouchers from Microsoft adCenter, Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and other PPC vendors.

• Supported Application Programming Environment - If you develop sophisticated website application that may involve database applications or sophisticated, non-standard procedures, you may be in need of specific Application programming Environments. Depending on your operating system, your level of application programming environment expertise, and the development tasks at hand, you may want to choose a web hosting plan that supports one (or more) of the following Application Programming Environments:
  • CGI - CGI (Common Gateway Inteface) is an application standard for interfacing application with web servers. There are many CGI scripts that are available for free on the Internet. CGI scripts are often implemented in the Visual Basic or C++ languages.

  • PHP - PHP is a server-side scripting language usually written in an HTML context. Unlike HTML code, a PHP script is parsed by a PHP run-time module which is server-side installed. PHP's support for Apache (Unix) and MySQL (database) attributes to its industry popularity.

  • Perl - Perl is a programming script language, that is used to create server-side website applications. Perl is installed on most Unix and Windows-based web servers. Perl is an boject-based interpreted language.

  • Python - Python is an interpreted object-oriented scripting language which provides access to databases and CGI programming.

  • FrontPage Extensions - Microsoft (Windows-based) FrontPage Server Extensions are a group of programs which run on an IIS server. These extensions interact with the FrontPage Microsoft Office application for authoring purposes, administration purposes, and browse-time functionality. These extensions provide backward compatability support for older versions of FrontPage.

  • Active Server Pages (ASP) - Active Server Pages (ASP) are web pages that contain server-side scripts embedded into HTML. ASP is a Microsoft solution, which requires its support in the underlying IIS web server.

  • MySQL Database - MySQL is an open source relational database management system that relies on the SQL query language for processing data in a database. MySQL provides API's (Application Programming Interface) for the languages Eiffel, C, C++, Perl, Java, and Python. MySQL is typically used for web-based applications and has become extremely popular because of its speed, reliability, and its ability to run on both Unix and Windows-based operating systems.

  • Microsoft Sharepoint - Sharepoint is a Windows-based solution that facilitates collaboration, provides content management features, implements business processes, and supplies access to information that is pertinent to an organization or company's processes and goals.

• RSS Support - Some hosting plans provide for RSS (Really Simple Syndication) support which allows users to view headlines and summaries from your website without having to physically visit the individual website.

• Blog Support - Some hosting plans provide for Blog support, which allows you to build functionality into your website so that you can share dialogs with users of your website.

• Technical Support - ISP Technical Support is a critical issue when choosing a hosting plan. Ideally, live 24x7 telephone support is optimal. Other important support considerations include Live interactive browser-based chat, Email support, and extensive online documentation that supports your website building and maintenance needs.

• Control Panel Management - Control Panel management permits the web hosting plan owner to manage their plan interactively from the web hosting plan's website. Tools to register domains, create Email Addresses, add SSL certificates, add online payment or shopping cart support, etc., should all be manageable via a browser-based Control Panel management facility.

• Online Statistical Reporting - This feature allows you to retrieve website activity reports for your website, in terms of number of page impressions, number of website hits, etc., and permits you to gauge website activity over various time quantums.

• Server Backup Support - Server backup support is a very important consideration when choosing a web hosting plan. Servers (computers) are prone to crashing periodically, and it is important that your ISP have recent backups of your website should their servers crashed. More importantly, their servers should have redundant support, so that if a server crashes, an alternate computer (server) immediately takes its place (via an automated failover process), containing an exact replica of the failed server. Also, it is important to find out how many days, weeks, and months of backup are kept available by your ISP, in case you need a certain version of a file from your website, dating back to a certain date.

• Hosting Costs - Hosting costs usually include a monthly fee that includes Email functionality, a maximum amount of storage space allocated, a monthly bandwidth consumption maximum, control panel support including website builder tools, server backup support, and several (if any) supported application environments. Each of these items were discussed earlier on this web page. Note that some hosting plans put a limit on the number of web pages that can be created under the monthly plan.