Basic web hosting is hosting that costs less than $50/month – typically $5 -$20/month, though some hosts charge more. Basic hosting is ideal for small businesses, community groups, and personal sites. Basic hosting plans have most of the features of advanced hosting plans. You should have an email account, database support, website statistics, and other personalizing features such as weblog software, guest books, or basic ecommerce software.

Advanced hosting plans offer more bandwidth and disk space. For sites with very high traffic (millions of page views per month) or high bandwidth services such as streaming video or sound, these plans may be necessary. Other advanced hosting plans offer lots of storage. If your website is more than 5GB in size it may require an advanced hosting solution. Advanced hosting also (usually) offers better technical support. If you are a novice user not familiar with FTP or working with databases, you may require more technical assistance. Advanced hosting also may offer more domains (www.yourcompany.com), more email accounts, better ecommerce software, a shared ssl certificate (for accepting secure payments online), and more MySQL databases.

Many people decide to start hosting on a basic plan and later upgrade to a plan that grows with their website. Most web hosting providers allow you to upgrade from a basic to a more advanced hosting plan. I would recommend talking to a human sales representative before signing up for a plan. You can get a better sense of the company’s service and have any specific questions answered.