What is the Price of Cheap Web Hosting?
A Web Hosting Article Contributed by Frances Rhea
Low Cost and Cheap Web Hosting
Is there such as thing as good cheap web hosting? Since price is always one of the major factors in choosing web hosting we need to determine if cheap is best. Paying more for web hosting does not necessarily mean that you'll get better web hosting though. A higher price does indicate that you will receive better support. You will be paying for it, but they will have the income needed for professional, knowledgeable staff.
This still leaves us with the question of whether such a thing exists as good cheap web hosting. This is a question you will have to answer for yourself.
What You Can Expect from Cheap Web Hosting
If you have investigated free web hosting, you have found that you don't get what you don't pay for. Free sites are notorious for providing poor service with little disk space and small bandwidth allocations. This is obviously not for you or you would not be reading this article. Let's take a look at what you can expect from cheap web hosting.
The cheapest hosts provide generally enough disk space and bandwidth allocations for most general web sites. Unless you have a large business with lots of web visitors each month, almost all of the hosting companies available will do. You can expect to pay anywhere between $3 - $9 per month.
Their support should be fairly adequate as long as you do not require an immediate response. The cheap web hosting sites are often run by individuals who have other jobs and spend only part of their time dedicated to running their Internet hosting business. This means that it can take up to 48 hours sometimes to get a response.
If you have an active business on the Web, you may not want to take that kind of risk. Slow support and server down times occur at the worse possible moments.
Tips on Finding Cheap Web Hosting
There are some things to look for that will help you find cheap or fairly inexpensive web hosting that will satisfy your web site needs.
Make sure you pay attention to the Terms of Use and the Acceptable Use Policy. Often there are hidden clauses that you may regret finding out later.
If you find hosting that is way too cheap for the features offered, think twice about signing up. Contact their support staff first and check their response time. Search their forums and see if you can talk to some of their other users before committing. See if you can find out how long they have been in business.
Always visit the support pages. Make sure you understand the features and that they have a phone number and email for support.
Cheap web hosts often have a dedicated server with another company. This help keep their costs down. This forces them to rely on other support staff to perform some of the physical tasks necessary to maintain a server.
Just remember, cheap is not always the best.
