So many people are on the lookout for cheap web hosting that they may be overlooking a few important points to consider when signing on with a web host. There is far more to this deal than price, and the few dollars you “save” on your hosting may come back to bite you when your site is unavailable for long stretches of times, or you otherwise have issues. Let’s look at five of the reasons why you need to look past cheap web hosting to the web hosting solution that is right for your particular site.
1. How Long Has Your New Host Been Around? – Fair question, and one that needs answering. The truth is that anyone can open a web hosting business right now. There are virtually no barriers to entry in this business, and the slick cheap hosting deal you just signed up for may actually be one of their first sales! You need to do your due diligence and find out who they are, how long they’ve been around, and what the general feeling is about this company out there. This is easily done by searching their name, doing a search on Twitter or Facebook, and checking out the popular internet marketing forums.
2. Shared and Oversold Servers – On a cheap web hosting plan, you will invariably be sharing a server with many other clients exactly like you. The problem arises when one of them either starts getting too big for the web space, and the access is limited for all the other sites on that server, or when they run afoul of Google, and get the IP address banned. This affects all the sites on the address, not just the offending site. Guilt by association. Many times cheap web hosts will oversell these accounts, hoping that most of them won’t develop past a minimal size. (Often true!) The more sites they can put up on one server the more profitable they are.
3. Poor Space and Bandwidth Allocation – Many times these hosting companies will limit the server space and bandwidth when sites start getting to be too large for their server resources. You’ll find your site “throttled”. Or slowed to an almost unusable degree, and you’ll be forced to upgrade to a “more suitable” account. And don’t believe anything you read about “unlimited” space, bandwidth and domains. Of course there is a limit! They’re just betting you won’t get anywhere near it!
4. Hidden Fees and Charges – With a very low cost account, you can almost guarantee that essential, at least in your view, items will be subject to extra charges. You may find limits placed on your emails, databases, domains and more. Support may even be charged for at this level. Just be careful and try to read the fine print if you go down this road!
5. No Opportunity for Growth! – Probably the most important yet least considered cost of going with cheap web hosting is the absence of room for growth! You likely have a vision of what you’d like your site to be; why hobble it out of the gate? You might be surprised how fast sites can grow and develop, but only if they are allowed to!
It’s my view that at least in web hosting, cheap is the enemy of good. For a very few dollars more per month, you can have all the features you need, and not have the headaches described above. When tempted to go with cheap web hosting, consider the costs!
