ASP (Active Server Pages) is the Microsoft server-side scripting engine, which runs on Windows servers. While using ASP scripting for your website can be extremely useful, particularly if you are featuring ecommerce functionality, you should bear in mind the additional costs of using ASP in comparison with PHP.

Firstly, ASP itself is an add-on of Microsoft's Internet Information Services (IIS). This means that it only runs on Windows platforms, which means that you need to pay for hosting on a Windows server. This is generally more expensive than PHP hosting, simply because hosting companies have to pay for the Windows operating system, as well as IIS and ASP. Licences for this software are not cheap, and this hikes up the cost of the hosting.

Another reason for the hosting being more expensive is that hosting companies using Windows servers usually have some staff who have been trained and certificated as Microsoft-approved.

A third stack of additional costs is in the fact that if you wish to use languages other than VBScript and JScript, you will need to install third party add-ons. The same goes for adding many features to ASP (which, incidentally, mostly come as part of the free PHP install).

You should certainly make sure that you consider these extra costs when you are choosing your hosting platform.

By Brian Jackson

For more information on domain names and domain name registration questions please feel free to contact Domainmonster.com support team who will be happy to assist you.