Finding Cheap Web Hosting Providers: It’s not Just About Money
Sure thing, everybody wants cheap web hosting services and wishes to pay as low as possible on the web hosting charges. However, it’s not just about finding cheap web hosting services as there’s more to it. So, let us look at all the aspects of a cheap web hosting service, apart from the money considerations. Nobody can deny the sheer fact that affordable web hosting for small business is the most necessary thing, but at the same time, if the hosting package doesn’t deliver the needed features, the mere purpose of paying for the hosting charges gets defeated.
Selecting Affordable Web Hosting
Remember, whenever you look for low cost web hosting, you must firstly look out for a reliable web hosting service provider, followed by the features offered by the vendor in the concerned package. Secondly, you must also ensure that the tech/customer support team of your vendor is good enough to reply well within time and in a manner that may resolve all your problems, be it a simple basic question or a highly technical issue. Now, of course when you talk about budget web hosting, you should keep an eye on the annual subscription charges, though you must not sacrifice any of the necessary features for the heck of saving few dollars.
Comparing various inexpensive web hosting packages
So, how exactly do you decide which web host is cheap and reliable and which isn’t? Well, of course the past track records of a web host will give you an idea about its rapport and capabilities of the support team. However, at the same time a relatively new hosting provider may offer very low hosting rates so as to catch the eyes of the customers. This is where things get tricky. Such hosts may be pretty good and trying to promote their business at low costs, while some of the other hosts may not be reliable and you may end up investing on the wrong host, just trying to save a few handy bucks.
Pricing Versus Features: The Trade-Off Theory
There’s always a big trade off between pricing and features when you try to pick a cheap web hosting provider. Now, it completely depends upon what kind of website(s) you’re planning to host with this account and the features that you may require for setting-up and maintaining the same. If you happen to be a novice level user and just a simple personal blog is all you’re looking at, then you should pick the cheap website hosting package that includes one-click installation of WP blogs, photo galleries, and gives you access to at least 10-25 MySQL databases.
Remember, if you are not provided with free website builder or one-click installation scripts then you might have a hard time doing things on your own for the first time. Therefore, if you find a cheap web host that offers you web hosting with basic features but no goodies like free one-click installation scripts, website builder and MySQL database wizard at say $3.95 per annum, and there’s another web host that offers all these goodies in its hosting package for $4.95 per annum; the second one is obviously the better choice.
Of course you end up paying $1 extra, (which might look unnecessary early on) but you’ll not need to struggle with anything on your own and the free goodies will turn out to be worth several hundred dollars for you. Depending upon your requirements and level of comfort in dealing with website set-up, you should pick the right package and the trade off must be in favour of features.
But, at the same time, it doesn’t mean you pick a package with unlimited data transfers, bandwidth, MySQL databases, eCommerce shopping carts, advanced web statistics, and hundreds of features that you’re definitely not going to use for next one year or so. This will simply mean wastage of money, and your main intention must be to save money, though not at the cost of highly essential features.
Should you go by the Testimonials?
It is not unknown that 50% of the testimonials don’t really speak the truth. They could be paid testimonials that a particular web site host has obtaining by paying compensation to some of its customers. Hence, searching the feedback and reviews of a particular web host on major search engines like Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Bing and the likes of them, may be a better idea than looking at the testimonials given on the website of respective hosts.
Other Considerations
Despite the low cost web hosting services offered and good rapport in the market, a particular web hosting provider may not turn out to be an ideal choice, because of following reasons.
First of all, you must look at the uptime ensured by the concerned web host in last few years. All the low cost web hosting providers promise 99.9% uptime guarantee, but things tend to vary drastically when it comes down to reality. When you pay very low hosting charges, you can’t fancy 99.9% uptime guarantee, nevertheless you must watch out that the figures don’t go below 99.5% in reality.
Secondly, you must be pretty sure that you don’t have to pay anything extra apart from the cost of the hosting package selected by you, under any circumstances. You must be wary of those inexpensive web hosting providers that initially charge only $3-$4 per annum, but start adding surcharges and additional taxes in due course of time.
Common Mistakes Committed by Beginner Level Users
More often than not, the beginner level users don’t do a lot of research and simply pay for a cheap hosting package, which looks appealing in their opinion. However, due to shortage of knowledge in the hosting field, they end up selecting a hosting package, which isn’t ideal for their needs. As a result, they end up buying another hosting package after few months, and the money paid on the initial hosting package simply goes as a sheer waste.
The next common mistake is blind selection of a web hosting service provider referred by a friend or acquaintance. The beginner level users feel hosting is just an evil from which they can’t escape, and they wish to stay away from any further investigation, after paying annual subscription charges. This often results in wastage of time and money as you may not be fully aware of the facilities included in the website hosting package that you’ve paid for. As such you may end up paying money to a web designer/coder for building a simple website that could have been set-up with the free website builder within few minutes.
Last but definitely not the least; the most common mistake committed by the beginner level users is that they tend to get attracted by catchy ads pretty easily. And, far worse, they take decisions in a hurry, because they don’t realize the importance of selecting a good web hosting service provider. So, it is quite possible that they end up buying a web hosting package from somebody who has actually bought a reseller web hosting package. Things could be smooth so long as your provider maintains a profitable business, but things could go wild if that doesn’t happen to be the case. Remember, the reseller hosts may disappear overnight. So, you must be wondering what happens in such a case. Well, in simple terms, if your host runs to the hills, your web hosting charges are wasted and far worse – your website is gone along with the host too, unless you’ve back-up of the latest data.
Of course, the novice users never bother to take back-ups, do they? (Some of them may not even know that they should take regular back-ups of their website data). And, it may take days or even months together to get things back in shape. In case, your hosting provider had booked the domain too, things could be far worse than you can expect. It is even possible that you may lose that domain, and even if you succeed in getting it transferred somehow, the process in going to be quite lengthy and painful.
The Bottom-Line
The best cheap web hosting vendor is not necessarily the one that offers you web hosting packages at the minimum cost, but the one that offers you reliable services, a web hosting package with adequate features, decent tech/customer support and high uptime guarantee. Of course, there’s more to it, but in a nut shell, these basic aspects are extremely important when you look for low budget web hosting services.
Above all, a good cheap web hosting service provider must assure that all your necessities are met with, when you pay for the subscription charges. Remember, many of the hosting providers offer a 30-day money back guarantee, which can be really handy, if you’re not sure about your choice.