Features

Domain and email forwarding are often provided free of charge with domain registration, but make sure you check the conditions. Can you administer your own forwarding and change it whenever you like? Can you set up and forward more than one email address?

Email hosting

Alternatively, you can get your registrar to host your email, meaning that you get your mail directly from its mailserver. This will work out simpler and more flexible if you want to set up multiple addresses. You may also be able to opt for services such as server-based anti-spam and anti-virus.

Email hosting will probably cost extra, but again the amount should be small. A standard email account, like you probably already have with your ISP, is known as 'IMAP/POP3'. This allows you to collect your mail from standard email software, such as Outlook Express, by setting up an account in the program with the details supplied by your host. You'll typically get up to five accounts, but you should also be able to set up a much larger number of 'aliases'. For example, if you're running a small business, you might have one account for yourself, such as me@businessname.com, and one for your business partner, her@businessname.com. You'd set up your email software to collect mail from the former, and hers from the latter.

But you might also set up an alias, info@businessname.com, for general enquiries.This name wouldn't have its own IMAP/POP3 account, but would be attached to either your account or your business partner's, so that you or she would receive

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any messages sent to that address.

Most mail hosts can also offer webmail, allowing you to access your email from a web browser when you're not at your own PC. Finally, you should be able to access server-based features such as forwarding and auto-responder, so when you're away you can redirect your email to a different address and/or set a message that will be sent in reply to all email (such as 'Sorry, I'm away until...'). Because this is on the server, it'll work when your PC is switched off.

Although you'll receive email from your host's mailserver (assuming it's not forwarded), you'll normally continue to send mail via your ISP's mailserver. This is because mailservers are protected against just anyone sending mail through them; your ISP's mailserver will accept your mail because you're connecting through that ISP. If for some reason you want to use your hosting company's server to send mail (known as SMTP), check that this can be set up.

Web hosting

Hosting a website is the most complex of the requirements you may have. We can't cover all the technicalities of hosting a website in this article, but we can tell you the main issues and pitfalls to be aware of when choosing a host.

For most users, the type of web hosting you'll be looking at is on shared servers. This means your website is hosted on a physical server (one of dozens or hundreds of PCs sitting in a rack somewhere) that may also host content for a number of other users at the same time.

Unlike with co-located hosting, where the customer owns the physical server, or dedicated hosting, where one customer has total control over a managed physical server, you'll have only limited administrative access; the server itself is managed by the hosting company, which dictates what you can and can't do with it. On the plus side, it's a relatively cheap and simple option.

You're unlikely to be given any cast-iron guarantees of performance or reliability, but your host should be able to quote 'uptime', the percentage of the time that the server is accessible and working correctly, which should be in the very high 90s.