The following are 10 basic features that can be found in a Unix/Linux hosting plans that can be found on our top 10 hosts:

1. Control Panel - This is where you manage your hosting account. Some hosts use a third party control panel like cPanel or Plesk. Others use an inhouse developed control panel. Lunarpages and Hostgator use cPanel while iPower develops their own one called vDeck. The moment you signup for a hosting package, you must be provided with a CP to manage your webspace.

2. POP3 email accounts & aliases - yourname@yourdomain.com is an example POP3 email. Majority of the top 10 hosting companies listed here provide you with more email accounts than you really need.

3. FTP Accounts & Virtual FTP - This is where you upload your files, delete them, update them. This again comes along with the CP. Make sure you have handful of FTP sub-accounts also to provide your clients/users password protected directories. This is very much useful wherein your clients / users can use the FTP to upload /download files from particular password protected folder of your website. Lunarpages offers you unlimted FTP accounts.

4. Backup - Most of the Hosts take Automated Backups. But users do not take much care on this while choosing the hosting plan. This feature is as essential as anyother in this list. Lunarpages provides daily tape backup.

5. Web Statistics - Analysis is of your website visitors plays a important role in the success of your website. Say, your website has been launched and you get 50 unique visitors or more than 500 visitors per day. Whatever the case may be, you can view the report using Statistics Application that run in the server backend. A popular web statistic software is Webalizer.

6. Bandwidth - Choose the Hosting Plan that gives enough Bandwidth for your website. Even though you cannot judge at the beginning, as time progresses, you can easily deduct the Bandwidth required. You'll have peace of mind if you sign up for one of our top 3 hosts as they offer bandwidth that take into account of the traffic surge. To know more about how bandwidth works, you can read this article: What is Bandwidth and Data Transfer?

7. PHP & Mysql Support - All the Linux Plans support PHP & Mysql. Make sure you get this free of charge when you buy the hosting plan. Few hosting providers offer good of MySQL Database Support & PhpMyAdmin. PowWeb is one of them.

8. Webmail & SMTP - Email becomes key part in your life once you launch the website. Check if the hosts provide with Webmail to check your mails thru a web based interface such as Squirrelmail or Horde. Checking email will be faster if you download the mails thru email clients such as Eudora or Outlook Express. Only if SMTP or IMAP support is enabled you can use this option. All our recommended hosts has this feature.

9. SPAM Filter - No email user is free from a spam attack. Hence you need to have spam filters installed on the server where your website resides. A good spam filter like what PowWeb is offering has black/white & greylisting features so that you know which emails are most likely spam emails.

10. Shopping Cart - A shopping cart is a piece of software that acts as an online store's catalog and ordering process. OsCommerce is among the most commonly used shopping cart. This software is available in PowWeb, Lunarpages and Hostgator plan.



About the author:
Leo L. - Editor of http://www.hostingchecker.com