With the World Wide Web being the main portion of the internet people are utilizing today many people find themselves wanting either personal or business websites. In order to have a website you must have a web host. Web hosting can be costly at times and if you are a novice to the internet you could be paying too much to host your website. How does one find affordable web hosting? First you must consider the services being offered for the cost. How much web space are you given? Does the company offer any extras such as low cost domain registry, or additional email addresses? Do they offer cool add-ons such as visitor tracking information or bulk mailing capabilities; if so at what additional costs?

How can you find affordable web hosting? Well, you can start by using your search engines. Nowadays search engines offer web hosting of their own. Such as Yahoo, which in cooperation with geocities offers their users web hosting at affordable cost. For a small monthly fee you can upgrade your geocities free hosted account to something more professional. Services offered include a domain name for an annual fee and additional hosting space for a monthly charge to be paid annually.

Other avenues of seeking affordable web hosting are to go with a service that specializes in low cost, affordable web hosting. Companies such as godaddy.com offer their users affordable web hosting as well as many of the services I mentioned above. You can get your domain name, hosting space, email accounts, bandwidth limitations, as well as bulk mailing programs, data tracking, and even anti-virus programs to filter any viruses out of your email box.

Make sure you know what is included in the package you are looking into paying for. Are there any hidden costs? Are there any setup fees you need to know of. Many affordable web hosting providers offer discounts for people who pay in advance, instead of paying month to month, they give you a discount if you pay annually. This ensures your business and also gives you more benefit of having a hosted website at an affordable cost, in the long run. Make sure that when choosing a web hosting service, you also know what types of content you are allowed and not allowed to publish on their servers. This can save you a lot of struggle and prevent a breech in the TOS (terms of service).

Before settling on one single web hosting service you must consider shopping around, Comparing each provider's prices, services available for the cost, terms of service and ease of use. Affordable web hosting is easy to find if you know what you want in web hosting and you compare the prices of a service provider and many of their competitors. If you are looking for a personal website to be hosted, a smaller not so well known company may be able to suit your needs at an affordable cost. If you are a business owner that wants the exposure the internet has to offer with E-commerce going strong, then you may want to choose a more well known web hosting provider.

Sandra Stammberger is the editor of Akanakea http://akanakea.info/. An online directory focusing on web hosting and ecommerce.