Cheap web hosting is the best – or is it?
I’ve made such mistake. When I was entering the online business arena, I chose a cheap web hosting that is, well, super cheap. With all the promise of 99.9% uptime guarantee and such, I confidently signed up with the web hosting provider. Then disaster strikes – my websites accessibility were poor – during the day, the sites either load very slowly or even off line. My sites were going off line only a couple of seconds, but having the outages many times during the day is really annoying. I immediately searched for alternatives.
You should look for affordable and reliable web hosting
Lessons learned, I started looking for affordable and reliable web hosting – all in all, I was looking for the best value for money. Please note that cheap and affordable are two different things – affordable is not necessary cheap; affordable is “just right” compared to the “normal” pricing found in many web hosting offers on the Net.
How affordable is “affordable”? The pricing for affordable web hosting services is about $4 – $6 /month. But again, pricing is just the tip of the iceberg – you need to learn the features offered and some other issues – more on this later; read on…
How about expensive or premium web hosting?
Please bear in mind, expensive web hosting providers are not generally more reliable than the affordable ones. One of my clients was sign up with an old web hosting provider charging $20/month for a shared hosting account with basic plan. The reliability? Sub par. Customer support? Awful.
Some pointers on choosing the right web hosting for your business website
I am currently hosting my websites with a couple of reliable web hosting with superb customer support. I’ve been with them for years and I’m happy with their services.
That being said, I do have some tips to help you choose the right affordable web hosting provider for your business websites:
1. Read web hosting reviews and recommendations
You need to look beyond on-site features and benefits – you need to go to the Internet and start reading web hosting reviews written by real web hosting clients.
2. Read web hosting guides
There are some common sense guides to follow in choosing a web hosting provider. Again, you probably want to surf the web looking for trusted web hosting guide for tips on how to choose the right web hosting provider.
3. Never choose cheap web hosting – choose affordable and reliable one
The cheap web hosting providers are offering cheap hosting for some reasons, such as attracting new clients and standard/basic service quality.
To me, a web hosting customer support is very important – even more important than the feature themselves. 24/7 live customer support is a standard today, but it’s not enough – you need a helpful customer support team.
“We can’t help you with that – sorry” is not enough; we want “We can’t help you with that – sorry; but we can’t suggest you to do x, y, z or go to a, b, c to find your answers.”
For such support, I am actually willing to pay more – the good news is, you can enjoy those from the right affordable web hosting provider.
Final words
You need to carefully choose whom you are partnering with – just like in any form of business partnerships, choosing the right web hosting provider is crucial for your business success – it’s generally a long time partnership that is profitable and beneficial for you and your web hosting provider.
Trying any cheap web hosting provider you can find is not wise, as migrating sites due to poor services are resource consuming and will disrupt your website access during the transition. Poor site access won’t bring you business success, for sure.
Ivan Widjaya
In web hosting, I choose quality over price
Image: Danilo Rizzuti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net