Your website is your online identity. Basically, it serves as an online shop, where visitors get round-the-clock access to your products and services. So it must convey your brand message instantly to your target audiences and must be accessible to your visitors  24 × 7.

There are a number of good applications hosting providers thriving in the business today. With my years of experience in this domain, I present to you a list of 5 good application providers that will guide you to choose the one that addresses best your web requirements.

1) LimeDomains

LimeDomains, an open source one-click application hosting solution, offers a gamut of domain name registration, domain transfer & web hosting services etc. to individual, SMBs, corporate & organizations across the world.

It's a VeriSign secured, first ICANN accredited registrar to include powerful open source applications and a full featured hosting account with every new domain purchased/transferred. It offers a large pack of hosting solutions and applications to choose from including WordPress , Drupal, Joomla, Geeklog, osCommerce, Coppermine, Bugzilla, Noah's Classified, Vanilla, Zenphoto, OSDate etc.

LimeDomains supports good programming languages such as Perl v-5.8.8, Python v-2.6, CGI v-1.1and has MySQL v5 database. Their domain registration and transfer services are quite affordable at $8.99 and $6.99 respectively. They also offer three hosting plans to their customers currently, Basic (free website hosting with every domain purchase/transfer), Standard ($4.99/month) and Premium ($9.99/month).

2) HostGator

HostGator, a Green web host, offers a rich repertoire of open source applications besides domain registration/transfer & shared, reseller and dedicated web hosting to web visitors all around the globe. It was rated as one of the fastest growing private companies in America by inc. Magazine in 2008.

It offers excellent customer and technical support to its clientele worldwide and currently hosts around 2,200,000 domains. Currently based in Texas, HostGator provides its customers with the SiteStudio website designer, which helps in creating a website easily. Its affiliate program now pays its total affiliates a sum of more than $400,000 per month.

It supports programming languages such as PHP4 & 5, SSH, Cron jobs, Python, Ruby On Rails etc. and currently, there are three different web hosting plans available such as Hatchling ($4.95/month), Baby ($7.95/month) and Business ($12.95/month).

3) FatCow

Launched in 1998, FatCow is an eco-friendly web host that has lately announced its 100% wind energy for data centers and servers. It offers a broad array of application hosting, web hosting, website management, domain registration, E-mail & E-commerce services, marketing services etc. to web users all across the world.

It also provides customers with site builders and analytic tools for easy management of your website and being a part of Hacker Safe Community, it keeps a track of its system 24 × 7 to resolve security breaches, if any. FatCow ensures its customers fast uploading/downloading speed through multi-Gigabit connections.

Currently, it offers two hosting plans namely, the Original FatCow plan ($66/year) and the MiniMoo plan (only $5/year).

4) BlueHost

BlueHost, founded in 1996, runs a large number of advanced web applications and has been a pioneer in hosting over 825, 000 domains. It offers Free Website Builder application that paves way for smooth creation of your website and has no set up fee (shared hosting plan).

It runs primarily on Linux based servers, which are used for offering shared hosting solutions. It keeps a round-the-clock monitoring of its network infrastructure with complete backup support to its clientele worldwide.

BlueHost offers four hosting plans currently such as 24-month hosting plan [2 years account x $6.95 mo.], 12-month hosting plan [1 year account x $7.95 mo], 6-month hosting plan [6 mo. x $8.95 mo.($53.70) + $30 Setup + $10 Registration] and 3-month hosting plan [3 mo. x $9.95 mo.($29.85) + $30 Setup + $10 Registration] with rich features under each plan.

5) Network Solutions

Born in 1979, Network Solutions is a leading application hosting provider that offers complete open source application hosting along with other services such as domain name registration, web design, e-commerce solutions, online security products, search engine optimization & marketing etc.

Network Solutions has recently accomplished the milestone of 6.6 million domain names. It supports a number of programming languages including Perl, Ruby on Rails, Python, PHP 5 etc. It offers domain name registration & transfer at $35.00 and $19.00 respectively. Currently, three plans are available namely; Standard plan ($9.96/month), Advanced plan ($13.29/month) and Pro plan ($29.13/month).

After going through the above mentioned information on good application hosting providers, you must be ready to take a plunge into the world of dot com, start your website using the application of your choice, reach out to global audiences and open multiple revenue streams for yourself.