The matter of choosing between operating system (OS) running web server hosting your web site as old as web hosting business. The OS controls all functions of web server hosting your site, so it comes naturally to pay special attention when choosing one over another. But what are really options you have?

Mainly you can choose between web hosting based on Windows, Linux or Unix operating systems. A brief description and analysis of different systems will narrow list of options to only two.

Microsoft’s Windows server operating systems (NT/2000/2003) have a rather friendly and familiar user interface, making IT teams to easier in this aspect. Another plus is given by it’s excellent integration capabilities with other applications developed by Microsoft and let’s face it their range is absolutely impressive. The main key point of Windows based hosting is its support for .ASP (Active Server Pages) or advanced ASP.NET. This language for web development was created by Microsoft to facilitate creation of dynamic web pages linked to SQL databases. It also provides capabilities for integration with other systems.

It can be said that Unix is OS that powered beginning of Internet era and due to his qualities is still used today. Linux OS was developed having Unix as starting point and this is how two share many features. Today Linux version of Unix system is more common on web servers and this has to do with higher licensing costs and with rather specific hardware requirements for Unix. This is why we will continue with Linux only, but Unix is taken into account as well. Linux hosting has its strong points in fulfilling one’s requirements for a good web server and Web serving, file serving, mailing, and streaming are only a few. It proves itself is a very cost-effective choice from using hardware efficiently, and allowing an increased web sites per server ratio, this ultimately resulting in a decreasing cost of hosting per account.

So here are our two choices Windows and Linux.

Reliability

In past Linux OS were seen as more reliable over Windows. However with release of Windows 2003 server Microsoft has gone a long way and closed gap in this area. Linux servers are compatible with certain Microsoft extensions and applications and same is true for Windows.

Web Programming

When talking about free anything legitimate question that first pops into your mind is why pay when you can get it free?

And as for free web hosting there are plenty of places to get it from. As spread as they are, if you are not a stranger to whole Internet experience, you might even have a web site hosted for free.

Are you satisfied with your provider? Is it everything you wanted? Probably not. Anyway it is true that is comes with no cost and no other aggravations… or are there any?

Free web hosting cost no money but what can you expect from one?

Your web site will be turned into an advertising machine that works for free web host. Expect, banners, pop up windows, frames. They will all mess look of your web site in terms of design and accessibility for your visitors that might be literally flooded with popups almost after every click-through

You can't make advertising revenue of your web site, as most free web hosts don't allow it. This is not such a big issue when you are maintaining a personal web site, but cutting-off advertising revenues can mean significant losses for a business. For this last case, only a paid web hosting solution might be right answer.

Very little space for your web pages. With free web hosting provider offering 5 to 15 MB of disk space, your site's expansion will severely restricted. Growing your web site above offered quota would result in transferring to a paid plan offered by same hosting provider or finding a different paid web-hosting provider. In both cases you end paying for your hosting and you might loose traffic to your web site due to changing hosts.