Your Questions About Web Hosting Companies

admin answers:

I have used a lot of hosts (godaddy, cphosting, nomonthlyfees, bluehost). My favorite right now is bluehost- it costs more than the others but offers great support, and best of all, free addon domains, so I can host 3 of my sites with one host. Cphosting was pretty good- almost as cheap as godaddy, good service, and offers password protected directories, which godaddy does not. (I frequently do the “proofing” test site as a pass protected area before making a site public) Godaddy is good for something inexpensive.

You may want to offer a choice to the customer- a basic package (eg. A 5 page site with some template-y layout but customized banner and colors) for a set price, or a custom per-hour rate for a more advanced and customized site.

I’d say look at some of the following links, determine how much you NEED to make to pay your bills, and then tack on extra if you think your skills merit it. Also, bear in mind that you can always change your rate- mine gets upped every January.

Some people like to charge per page, but I prefer to charge per hour. I usually ask for as many details as possible (this should not be an inconvenience for the client since they will have to do this at some stage in the process regardless). Then based on that I’ll state a range of hours I expect it to take, eg. 15-20 hours, so it has a cushion.

I prefer the hourly approach because all pages are not created equal :-P, some sites require more customization of graphics and content than others.

I don’t include the hosting/domain in the price, since not all clients want to use the same companies, thus there are price differences. However, if you plan to handle the hosting and domain name registration for them (if they’ll provide the sensitive credit card/personal info) then you may prefer to just include it for simplicity’s sake.

My maintenance works the same… Hourly, since the amount of maintenance can vary, that way they aren’t paying for work I don’t do, or underpaying for work I do do. 🙂

If you do agree to maintenance (it can be a pain with some clients, I should warn you), or even if you don’t, it’s good to use contracts to protect both yourself and the client. These are easily found online by the way- just customize them a little. (Personally I prefer to work on the honor system, but if I worked with a lot of strangers I’d go the contract route for sure.)

Here are some interesting sites that can help you determine your rates:

Rate calculator-
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/freelance-pricing-1-set-rate

According to this page (someone got the info from dice.com though) http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=139097
its average of $43 for under one year, and $51 for one year.

Http://forums.freelanceswitch.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=544

(this next one is more for salary than freelance)
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Web_Designer/Salary

Good luck!

Let us know if you have more questions, like registering a business name, handling taxes, getting health insurance, etc.

admin answers:

Your ISP is your internet connection provider. If they do web hosting, that is separate; so don’t be confused.

A so-called Virtual Web hosting server can be programmed with multiple domain names. Let’s follow the breadcrums:

1. URL – the user types the website address

2. The address is looked up through the DSN to find the NAME SERVER. This goes through the name provider.

3. The NAME server converts this to the IP Address of the web host.

4. The webhost validates the name, and sub-domain (www and others) and starts to deliver the proper website to the user.

Good luck in understanding all of this.

admin answers:

Hi,

A VPS hosting package definitely sounds suitable if you need dedicated resources and want to have full control over these. It means that your sites won’t get shut down obviously as you would be in control of them.

At NetHosted we offer both managed and unmanaged VPS solutions depending which you require, we have a full description of these on our page if you want to take a look. We mainly host business clients on our VPS packages, we pride ourselves on our quality support.

If you have any questions please use the contact us form on our site, and check out our packages in the link below, thanks!

Regards,

Darryl

admin answers:

Http://www.goldpuma.com

Cheap and reliable.

From menu: Web hosting plans >>> Dedicated Servers

Hope this helps.