Hosting your own site can be economical if you make use of the hardware for other tasks as well. If you already own the computer/server and it's connected to the net then there is little additional costs. It is also a good learning experience if you wish to advance on to managing servers hosted remotly. For low bandwidth sites you may be able to get away with your normal ISP connection too. However, it may not be the most stable sollution. Every time the server goes down, so does your site. If there is nobody in the office to sort the problem e.g. overnight; your site could be down for hours at a time. Also should your site boom and need more bandwidth, you may find that you are purchasing at the expensive end of the market. If you use a remote host, they should have tech staff on site 24/365 to sort out any problems asap. The host also buys bandwidth in bulk so can get a much better deal than just you alone.

As for connection speed. This really depends on the number of consecutive visitors you expect on the site. If you only expect a few hundred visitors per month, then you will probably only have 1 vistor at a time using the site. So you only need to match there bandwidth (56kbps for dial up, or 500kbps or so for broadband). But if you expect 1000s of visitors per month, the chances are that 2 or 3 people could be connecting at once. Then the site would seam to go slow. So a thicker pipe would be required. Depending on your ISP, you may be able to upgrade your bandwidth progressivly as you site grows. But this may be expensive.

Welcome to WW MacBarry, posting side that is;)

Not sure what you meant by your own server?

With dedicated servers available on very professionally managed networks costing $100 to $150 per month these days I would question the practicalities of trying to run your own locally hosted/networked server for a company site.

In my experience a good third party hosting company is worth every penny. With a dedicated server you get all the same control as hosting it locally and none of the aggravation.

DIY hosting is certainly great experience (from a learning point of view), but if the site needs to be up and running 24/7/365 it really is a job best left to the pros.

If you meant hosting on a dedicated third party server/network...DO IT! You can beat that environment :)

Thanks for the reply. My current site has low traffic a few hundred clicks. I have broad band 1200 down 256 up. Can go to 1500 down 384 up at a reasonable cost. But after that the cost is out of hand.I have the equiptment and it is redundent. Have made a new site and have not been happy with past experiences with virtual hosted site. Just trying to look at options.