Webmail and SMTP

What Features To Look For When Applying For Good Hosting Plan
By Richard Clement

When looking for a host, it will be useful to obtain as much information as possible about the web hosting company itself and the services they offer. These pre-sales questions are a way to check several things about the web hosting company. You can obtain detailed information about the services they offer - the web hosting plans they have, the features included there, etc.

These days hosting plans on the web are getting very competitive and features of each plan are comparatively the same among web hosting providers. Whether novice or expert, you can find some useful information in this article to learn about some of the considerations to look at when you choose a web hosting service.

In this article I will not talk about things like space ,traffic and prices since there are plenty of related articles nowadays rolling around the net. My goal will be to clarify some of the most important features you have to look for when choosing your web hosting provider.

The following are 10 basic features that can be found in a Unix/Linux hosting plans that every serious hosting provider should offer you.

· Control Panel - This is where you manage your hosting account. In the context of web hosting it is an on-line application that give us the user ability to control many aspects of his web hosting account including, but not limited to: creating mailboxes, setup email forwarding, uploading and editing files, creating sub domains, park additional domains, automated installing of ready to use scripts and programs, managing databases, setup shopping carts. You need to check what exactly is included in a given control panel with the web hosting company you have chosen to go with.Some hosts use a third party control panel like cPanel or Plesk. Others use an inhouse developed control panel.The moment you signup for a hosting package, you must be provided with a CP to manage your webspace.

· POP3 email accounts & aliases - yourname@yourdomain.com is an example POP3 email. POP3 is an electronic mail protocol used to retrieve messages stored on an Internet/intranet e-mail server. Whenever a client wants to check for messages it connects to its Internet Service Provider's e-mail server and uses POP3 to login to its mailbox and download its messages.