08-12-2006, 01:39 PM
You need to get a domain name.
For e-mail at that domain, you will need to get an e-mail hosting service. This is usually bundled with a web hosting service but you can get an e-mail hosting service separately and independently of a hosting service.
Some companies offer all of these services together and do it using their own infrastructure. Other companies resell the services of a third-party (the real hosting company) under their own brand and merely do the billing and customer support for their own clientelle.
Beware of the web hosting companies that offer web hosting service bundled with a "free" domain name. Look very closely at the contractual arrangement and make sure that you are the domain name registrant and that you can take your domain name with you to another web hosting company when you get dissatisfied with their web hosting service. It used to be fairly common for (unethical) web hosting companies to register the domain name in their name so that you don't actually control the name and they lock you in as a hosting customer. The easiest way to avoid this pitfall is to purchase your own domain name through a real registrar independent of your hosting company before you arrange for hosting.
For my hosting, I registered with verio.com who uses the registrar MelbourneIT. They register the name properly under the customer's name. GoDaddy.com's normal registration is also "clean" for this and register the name properly in your own name and not theirs. I don't have experience using their "private" registration meant to hide your name from the public record. I worry that this means they are registering it under their name officially.
You don't provide a budget in your question asking for service recommendations but you do say that you will be looking for a web page for your business. I don't recommend any of the cheapo sites for a business for a variety of reasons. Expect to pay from $10 to $20 per month for professional web hosting services. I use verio.com's Unix hosting plans for my business web sites.
Note that many of the cheapo web hosting services offer very high specifications for storage space and monthly bandwidth but there is a hidden catch. Because of the (hidden) limit on CPU usage, you will run into the CPU limit well before the bandwidth limit. Indirectly the high storage limit won't be of much use if you can't serve that large content. There are some nice website content management tools that make it easier for website maintainers to create and update sites. Relative to old-fashioned, simple HTML websites these content management systems use up a lot of CPU time for each website visitor. When using these tools to create a great site and your site gets a little bit popular, the result is that you will run into the CPU limit of the hosting company much earlier and have the account (temporarily) suspended or possibly cancelled.
For e-mail at that domain, you will need to get an e-mail hosting service. This is usually bundled with a web hosting service but you can get an e-mail hosting service separately and independently of a hosting service.
Some companies offer all of these services together and do it using their own infrastructure. Other companies resell the services of a third-party (the real hosting company) under their own brand and merely do the billing and customer support for their own clientelle.
Beware of the web hosting companies that offer web hosting service bundled with a "free" domain name. Look very closely at the contractual arrangement and make sure that you are the domain name registrant and that you can take your domain name with you to another web hosting company when you get dissatisfied with their web hosting service. It used to be fairly common for (unethical) web hosting companies to register the domain name in their name so that you don't actually control the name and they lock you in as a hosting customer. The easiest way to avoid this pitfall is to purchase your own domain name through a real registrar independent of your hosting company before you arrange for hosting.
For my hosting, I registered with verio.com who uses the registrar MelbourneIT. They register the name properly under the customer's name. GoDaddy.com's normal registration is also "clean" for this and register the name properly in your own name and not theirs. I don't have experience using their "private" registration meant to hide your name from the public record. I worry that this means they are registering it under their name officially.
You don't provide a budget in your question asking for service recommendations but you do say that you will be looking for a web page for your business. I don't recommend any of the cheapo sites for a business for a variety of reasons. Expect to pay from $10 to $20 per month for professional web hosting services. I use verio.com's Unix hosting plans for my business web sites.
Note that many of the cheapo web hosting services offer very high specifications for storage space and monthly bandwidth but there is a hidden catch. Because of the (hidden) limit on CPU usage, you will run into the CPU limit well before the bandwidth limit. Indirectly the high storage limit won't be of much use if you can't serve that large content. There are some nice website content management tools that make it easier for website maintainers to create and update sites. Relative to old-fashioned, simple HTML websites these content management systems use up a lot of CPU time for each website visitor. When using these tools to create a great site and your site gets a little bit popular, the result is that you will run into the CPU limit of the hosting company much earlier and have the account (temporarily) suspended or possibly cancelled.