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Cheap Web Hosting - A Blessing In Disguise?

BY: Neil Day
Words: 435

Depending on the company, cheap web hosting can either be a blessing or complete nightmare. As with everything in life things are cheap for a reason. Whether your site will be hosted on an old server or whether it will have restricted functions, there is always a reason why a host offers cheap web hosting. Sometimes hosting will be cheap initially as the hosts hope to get you to upgrade to a more expensive hosting solution as you discover you need more functionality.

Before you sign up for cheap web hosting there are a number of steps you can take to ensure that you get the right hosting for you. The easiest way is to narrow down your choice of host to 5 or 6 possible hosts based on budget. Then create yourself a spreadsheet so that you can compare what each host will offer you.

The first thing to compare will be bandwidth and disk space. The key point to remember is that disk space costs a host very little whereas bandwidth is quite expensive. So if host A offers you 20gb of bandwidth and 100 megabytes of disk space and host B offers you 500 megabytes of disk space and 15gb of bandwidth Host A is making the better offer. Armed with this information you may be able to get host A to provide an even better cheap web hosting option and get them to increase their disk space as it won�t cost them much extra.

The next step is to ask the hosts to show you some sites that they are already hosting. You are asking to see these so that you can see the speed that the site opens at. Too slow and you should not use them. It is advisable to check these sites several times during the day as some servers get very busy throughout working hours but quiet for the rest of the time. Once you have the site details make sure to check it out at a site like whois.sc as it will tell you how many other sites are hosted on the server. Next check how many email addresses you get. You now should have a good idea of who you should be using for your cheap web hosting.

Two final points to note. Never combine your domain name purchases with your website hosting it will give the company too much of a hold over your sites and should you have a dispute they could prevent access to your site or domain. Finally, remember. If cheap web hosting looks too good to be true it most probably is.