Webhosting

Ever heard the saying “Penny-wise and Dollar-foolish”?

Well bargain priced website hosting may just represent the perfect example of watching a jar full of pennies while bucket loads of dollars fly out the window!

When I launched my first website way back in the “dark ages” of 1997 I paid almost $150 a month in hosting and data transfer charges.

My web host watched how many files I uploaded like a hawk and always seemed to send their hefty invoices earlier with each passing month.

I’m obviously not the only one who felt that way, because suddenly a whole industry of “bargain” web hosts sprang up all over the web.

On the surface they all sound great, especially when you think you can go from $150 a month down to $4.95 a month!

Five bucks a month sounds great, until you realize the amount of data transfer (number of page views) and bandwidth (the amount of data transfer your host allows in a 24 hour period) you get for that low price severely limits your ability to do business.

This realization – along with a panic attack and a quick lesson in how data transfer and bandwidth get calculated – usually comes at the least convenient time.

When you exceed your limits, a bargain host usually just shuts you down with no warning.

Most webmasters realize they’ve made a mistake by choosing a bargain host when their site suddenly gets shut down in the middle of a big promotion because of a traffic spike. Believe me, everything just stops!

Here are a few bargain hosts that provide good service, but you really need to really check the fine print for how much bandwidth they allow.

www.FeaturePrice.com

For $24.95 a month you get to host up to six independent websites with a single account. You get unlimited data storage, unlimited email and a variety of other higher end services, but their bandwidth policy seems hard to understand.

www.HostSave.com

Host Save is another low price hosting company that delivers a wide range of services for only $6.95 per month. They recently raised their allowable data transfer, but their policy on how much bandwidth you can use at a given time seems non-existent.

www.DotEasy.com

For $25 DotEasy offers a domain name purchase along with one year’s hosting. Sounds incredible until you read the fine print to discover they limit you to 1 Gigabyte of data transfer a month. Not much data once you start getting reasonable site traffic.

The moral here? Either be prepared to have your business shut down mid-stream if you get successful, or pay a few extra bucks each month to ensure you have enough bandwidth and data transfer.

At a minimum, specifically ask and read the fine print about the host’s bandwidth and data transfer policies before it’s too late!

? Jim Edwards – All Rights reserved – http://www.thenetreporter.com

Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use fr^e articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate links…

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If you’re shopping around for an affordable web hosting plan, knowing what services you want and what you should pay for them can help you pick out hidden costs that could launch your cheap hosting plan into an expense you just can’t afford. Here are a few things to be on the watch for when you’re shopping for the best low-cost web hosting plan for your personal or business web site.

A La Carte Pricing

Don’t be pulled in by impossibly low prices. While the explosion of reseller web hosting has dropped web hosting costs to bargain basement prices, you should still expect to pay for quality, dependable, professional web hosting services. A la carte prices can make a web hosting plan seem like an incredibly good deal, but be sure to know exactly what you need and what you’ll be paying for it. When you add in setup fees, upgrade fees and additional monthly fees for things like scripting support, a mySQL database and php support, you can end up paying far more for your affordable plan than if you’d opted to pay a few dollars more for a more inclusive plan.

Read the Fine Print

Read through every little entry in the comparison chart to see what you’re being charged for, and what fees you might incur if you go over your monthly limits. If something isn’t clear, or isn’t listed, email the company to ask what they charge for particular services and if there’s a setup fee. It will tell you more than just how much the services cost – it will tell you how well they respond to support and help requests.

Unlimited May Not Be Unlimited

Don’t put your reading glasses away yet. If a plan promises ‘unlimited traffic’, read the fine print to see how they define ‘unlimited’. Many web hosting providers use ‘typical usage patterns’ to define what unlimited means. If your web site becomes popular enough to exceed what’s normal for other web sites of your size, you could end up getting charged extra for bandwidth even if it says ‘unlimited’.

E-Commerce Ready Sites for Cheap Prices

Check to see what’s actually included in that cheap e-commerce ready site. Does it include access to their secure server, or will you have to purchase your own license? Is there a good deal on bill-collecting services and credit card access, or will you have to arrange your own? Be sure you know what you’re getting for your money so you can plan your web hosting expenses wisely.

There are a lot of legitimately good web hosting deals to be had, but just like any other purchase, it pays to do your homework to make sure that you get the most affordable, most professional and best web hosting deal you can find.

To view our recommended web hosts, visit, Recommended Web Hosting Companies.

Carrie Reeder is the owner of eZerk, an informational website, with articles and the latest news about various topics.

With so many web hosting companies competing for your web hosting dollar, the companies have had to stretch their imagination to come up with ways to convince you that their company is giving you the most for your money, and consequently, the most affordable web hosting package for you. The most typical way they’ve done this is to throw in a bunch of bells and whistles to create full ‘packages’ so that you get everything you need – and a lot you don’t – for one low, affordable price.

To the typical new web hosting customer just putting up a web site of his own for the first time, all the options available can seem like a bowl of alphabet soup: lots of letters with very little meaning. Let’s take a look at some of the most common bells and whistles that you’ll find in web hosting packages typically labeled as affordable.

Storage and Traffic Allotments

These are expressed in MBs and GBs – megabytes and gigabytes. They’re the basic building blocks of all hosting plans. Storage is how much room you have to store files on the web hosting company’s server. Traffic is how many bytes of data you can transfer to visitors to your web site.

How much do you need? It depends on what you’re planning to use your web site for. Unless you’ll be running a lot of applications, doing streaming video or audio, or running a very large, database driven web site, you don’t need more than 1 GB of transfer allotment. Likewise, you can estimate the amount of storage space you’ll need by taking a look at how much space your files take up on your computer. Unless you’re planning to store a lot of images or large files, 20 MBs is more than sufficient for your needs.

You can find web hosting packages free that offer you 10-25 MBs of storage space, and for $5.95 and less per month that will give you 300 to 1000 MBs.

Free Domain Name or Transfer

Registering your own domain name can cost anywhere from $4.95 to $35 a year, depending on where you register and what top level domain – what’s after the dot – you choose. Transferring your hosting from one web host to another will usually cost about the same. Free domain name savings: 50 cents to a dollar a month.

Unlimited Sub-domains

A sub-domain is a lower level directory in your main directory – except it goes at the FRONT of your web site name instead of after the .com. Some web hosting companies charge you to set each one up, or limit the number you can host on your domain. With the number of otherwise identical plans that allow you unlimited sub-domains with no setup fees, there’s no reason to pay extra for them.

To view our top recommended companies for web hosting, visit: Recommended Web Hosting Companies Online.

Carrie Reeder is the owner of Ezerk, an informational website with articles and the latest news about various topics, including web hosting.

You have carried out the hard part and that’s creating the web site. The next step is to get it hosted as to allow the public find your site. So why do so many first time web host seekers fall into the trap of a bad web host company? Well there are a number of factors to consider and none bigger than the price. We all want cheap web hosting but unfortunately price is not always what you should go for.

You have to be more aware of the web hosting company that you choose. If you have a budget stick to it, if you see hosting for little or nothing and find yourself thinking “how do they make money” stay well away, the chances are your web site will be hosted with very little bandwidth resulting in a very slow accessible and unprofessional web site. You may also find that the customer service is little or none.

You need to clearly outline your own requirements to the web hosting company, if you do not do so you are at fault and not in any position to point the finger at others. If you make a list of requirements such as particular files you need etc you can send your requirements to multiple hosting companies and see who comes back with the greater service.

If you have more than one web site to host such as affiliate marketers it is not a good idea to put all your sites with the one web host company server to start with, you need to be 100% confident with the service, so start with one web site first as a test. Remember if you do host all your websites with one host company, all it takes is one problem to bring all your sites down and could result in lose of revenue for you. At least if you have some web sites hosted by another company they will still be online.

Some web host companies offer testimonials on their own web site from valued customers recommending them. Seeing is not believing, call these customers and get a face value recommendation for yourself.

What if I have problems?

Lets be honest, problems can occur and they maybe your fault and sometimes the web host company is to blame. Problems with technology can occur any time but it’s how the hosting company react to the fault that will determine if you stay with them or not. If you find your web site dropping off line or downloading slowly at a regular basis simply change to another web host company. On going problems not fixed is a very bad sign and it shows arrogance towards their customers. Support is vital from a web host company and it should be 24 hour if it’s a large organisation.

Virus Problems and Hackers

It is up to the web host company to ensure that your files are protected from virus and hackers at all times. There has been plenty of companies who have had their web sites hacked only then to find out that the web host company had not got the latest patches and security software applied. First timers to web hosting should always ask how often updates and what software is used to protect web sites.

Tips:

In business your web site can be a large source of revenue or sometimes your only source. Always do your own backup of the web site. If the web host company experience problems and for whatever reason has no backups available your whole business could be on hold. Backups are vital so do it as regular as possible or face the consequences. Some companies have testimonials on their web site from customers, do not be afraid to call these guys for an up to date reference.

If you where taking on an employee you would check all references, this is similar. Always get the full contact details of the web hosting company, many people simple go online and have an email address only as the contact. If their email goes down and you need to contact them you should have their full details at hand. Always shop around for the different web hosting plans and compare, you will find large differences, after you settle with a budget ask the necessary questions before you sign up.

About the Author
Declan Tobin is a successful freelance writer providing advice to consumers on purchasing a variety of Affordable Web Hosting and Cheap web hosting, and more! His numerous articles provide a wonderfully researched resource of interesting and relevant information.

The Basics:

Web hosting offers you the opportunity to put your web site online, when you think about it; it’s the only way you can do it. No matter how large or small in content your web site happens to be it has to go onto a web server. A web server is simply a larger and much more powerful computer than your own. Your internet content simply sits on this server for people to access and view your information. The web servers are stored within data centers, all you are simply doing is renting some space on the server.

Why use a web hosting service:

Firstly it’s very affordable. Web hosting companies will look after and update all software required to maintain your site, they will also add all security patches making sure your content is safe from hackers/viruses and unwanted spam. Once you register your domain name (web site name) you have to have it hosted for the public to view your information. If you run into any difficulties you will have a full technical support team to help you out. To host your own will cost too much on hardware, bandwidth and ongoing software updates.

I hear of shared web hosting ? What is it?

When shopping around for a web host company you will find that many are offering shared web hosting. Shared web hosting is simply a server that has a number of different web sites sitting on it simultaneously. You will be allocated a certain amount of disk space on the server and this may allow you to have a number of web sites hosted on the one server. Shared web hosting is a very secure service even though you could be sharing the server with many different companies. No other company will have access to your files. Many people think that using a shared service will make the web site act very slowly, this is totally incorrect, the information will be displayed and downloaded equally as fast as if it where on the server on it’s own. Web host companies offer shared hosting simply to use up all the space on the server, there is no benefit to you or them having empty hard disk space.

What makes a good web host site?

If you have developed a web site for business opportunity or to sell merchandise online you need reliability. Downtime costs you money so the less downtime you experience the better chance of making money. You need to compile a list of questions to ask the web host company when it comes to hosting your site. You need a guarantee response time if the unthinkable should happen and the site goes offline. You need 24 hour access to your files with 24 hour support if you intend selling products online, most of your sales could be made in the evening or night time so you have to have support for any issues that could arise. Statistics are also important; you need to know how many unique hits (people visiting your site) you are getting so you can see the trend of people just visiting to those who are buying. Some web host companies offer very substantial stats while others can be less informative, you should ask for a demonstration.

Word of mouth is a great way to hear as to who is a good host and a bad host. If you know somebody in a similar position to you, ask their opinion from their experience. There are plenty of good honest web host companies out there but like every market there are a few bad apples. Ask the questions and make sure you are confident with the replies before you join up.

Will it matter if I host my web site in my own country or in another?

Generally speaking no. If you are happy with your questions answered and the company have 24 hour support to allow for time differences you should have the same level service as if the web host company was based just down the road. Some people think that by hosting their website outside of their registered country they will lose their domain identity, this is false e.g. if I was based in Ireland and I had a computer website it would be something like www.computerparts.ie The .ie is the identity of Ireland but if I wanted this site hosted in the US I would still keep the .ie, there is no need to change to .com. That’s the great thing about web hosting, the world is your oyster and you can shop online globally until your are truly happy with the service.

About the Author
Declan Tobin is a successful freelance writer providing advice to consumers on purchasing a variety of Affordable Web Hosting and Cheap web hosting, and more! His numerous articles provide a wonderfully researched resource of interesting and relevant information.