sites. BEST BET For personal home pages, free web hosting is adequate. For commercial sites, find a pay service.   Pay services for web hosting may elicit a grumble from your wallet, because you're shelling out an additional monthly charge on top of what you already spend on your Internet connection. But for professional sites or serious personal pages and hobby sites, a pay service is the only way to go. At least you get a few nice premiums for your money: your choice of domain names, faster performance, larger amounts of hosting space, and control over advertising. If your pay service doesn't offer these benefits, find one that does. Here are a few general criteria for choosing a good web host:   Reasonable monthly charge Expect to pay about $10$25 per month for a typical personal or small-business site. Pay less, and your web host is probably making up the difference with reduced features, spotty service, or advertising. Pay more, and you're probably buying more than you need. But definitely shop around and see what competitors are offering.   Reasonable (or no) setup charge Some perfectly reputable web hosts charge a one-time setup fee when you first sign on. This isn't just soak money. The host does have to do a little extra labor to get a new account up and running. At the same time, many perfectly reputable web hosts don't charge a setup fee at all. The bottom line is, if you really like a particular web host, don't shy away from it just because of the setup fee. Some non-fee web hosts make up the difference at your expense. Your best bet is to catch a fee-charging host during one of its "fee waived" promotional periods. And don't pay more than $35 in any case.   Domain name registration (preferably free) Some web hosts will register your site's domain name on your behalf, and some will even front you the standard annual $35 registration fee if you agree to stay with them for the entire year. As you will see in "Reserving Your Domain" later in this chapter, you don't have to use your web host's registration service if you don't want it or need it, but going with your web host helps to smooth over some of the technical minutiae.   Upgradeable service plans A good web host offers several different plans at decent price points, maybe 10 MB of server space at the entry level to 10 GB or more for the premium package. While you can always switch web hosts at any time, why change when you can upgrade instead? Start with the cheapest plan, and as your site grows, you can simply graduate to the next rung of service.   Reliable customer support by phone Round-the-clock support by email is fine, as are online knowledge bases and web pages for frequently asked questions, but you need phone support, period. You need to be able to call your web host and talk to a live human being. If you can't get 24-hour support by phone and a toll-free number at the price you're willing to pay, you can comfortably settle for a help line during normal business hours. You may only use that phone number once or twice in your entire relationship with the host, but you'll be glad you have the option of calling if something goes wrong.   Site reports