ValueWeb offers everything small and midsize businesses and organizations need to host a quality site easily, powerfully, and affordably. It also gives you room to grow, with a good choice of options for upgrading to dedicated hosting. Other services are better suited to the lowest and highest ends of the spectrum, but ValueWeb deftly covers all the bases, with extra tools for detailed site statistics and html authoring, lots of prebuilt scripts, and a well-designed interface. Though its servers run Unix exclusively, ValueWeb also offers full support for Microsoft FrontPage extensions and Active Server Page code.

Honorable mention goes to Interland. It's a great choice for power users who have large sites and advanced needs but still want the affordability of a shared hosting plan. The service supports Microsoft SQL Server and many other advanced options, such as telnet and SSH access.

Novices with less ambitious sites should consider EarthLink or Yahoo! Web Hosting. Both offer a good amount of hand-holding, but both also have shortcomings: Yahoo! doesn't support CGI scripting, and EarthLink doesn't offer database features. These features may be unimportant to the absolute beginner, but they are significant enough to stand in the way of an Editors' Choice or honorable mention.

Copyright © 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in PC Magazine.