The Basic Plan for $6.95 as the Best Managed Hosting Services

Lunarpages has managed hosting solutions and offers managed hosting services beginning with a basic hosting plan for $6.95 a month that provides a free domain name for life and the ability to host 10 sites . It includes unlimited MySQL databases, up to 5000 MB storage, 400 GB data transfer, e-commerce, blog, forum and photo gallery, spam protection and is Microsoft Frontpage compatible.

The company also offers a Windows hosting plan for $8.95, a business-hosting plan for $21.95 and a dedicated hosting plan for $99. The business plan includes 10 websites, four free domain names for life, all the features of the basic plan, plus up to 8000 MB storage and 800 GB data transfer.

Host Gator's basic plan is $6.95 a month, and its other plans are $9.95, $14.95 and $74.95. Its basic plan includes 3.5 GB of disk space, 50 GB bandwidth, with one domain name and 20 sub-domains, email and a host of other services. You can get this package without a contract. As with the other providers, the more you pay each month the more space and services you have available.

Starter Package for $1.50

Superb Internet has a starter package for only $1.50 a month, a personal plan for $6.50 and a small business plan for $14.50 Its starter package includes two GB of monthly traffic, 10 MB of disk space, Website Creator for six pages of content, five email accounts and web statistics. The company's personal plan features 50 GB of monthly traffic, 1 GB of disk space, full ftp access, 10 free domains and 250 email accounts and more.

Hostway has packages starting at $13.95 per month, plus $19.95, $26.95, $44.95, $71.95 and $117.95 per month plans. Its basic plan has 600 MB of web space, 50 GB of monthly traffic and 25 email accounts. The other accounts increase the available services.

Know What Features You Need

To make an informed choice of which of the managed hosting services you're going to go with, you need to have a good sense of how much traffic you're going to generate, how many domain names you need, how many email addresses you want and whether or not you need some of the features, such as a blog management or a photo album.

Of course you can always upgrade if you find you're outgrowing your site's capabilities. When you're first starting you really don't know how much bandwidth you're going to need, but once you start analyzing traffic statistics you will have a better feel for the tools you need.

There are many managed hosting solutions available and it really doesn't matter to you where their servers are located. Check the websites carefully and remember the "how-to" managed hosting rule. If you don't understand something ask questions until you do.