Read this article first before you hit the purchase button to buy any web hosting service.
Are you looking for a web hosting service? Make sure you don't commit these 3 common mistakes like many others did,
or it could mean living hell to you.
Cheap Web Hosting is Good?
Most people go for price as their primary decision factor. This particularly holds true for newbies who're just getting started and they don't know what actually to look for.
Here's a word of caution: if you pick by price, you can die by price. Period.
Cheap web hosting may sound like a great deal... but you'll lose more money if your site gets shut down without warning.
Generally, low price means low reliability. A rough guide would be if it costs you $1 - $4 per month, then you need to be careful of this web host. Bear in mind, good things come at a price.
But good news for you is, due to fierce competition in the web hosting industry, some very reputable and reliable web hosts are willing to step down their prices yet continue to offer an unmatched hosting service that leaves their competitors in the dust.
That means, you don't have to pay more for a quality service. Getting a reliable web hosting at an affordable rate is feasible now. But again, not too cheap as in $1 - $4 per month that could result in quality compromise.
Free Vs Paid Web Hosting
The second mistake most people make is once they sign up for a free web hosting service, and if they wanted to get more features and resources, they'll upgrade to become a paid user with the same company.
If you want to get better features and more resources, I don't recommend you to upgrade with the free hosting provider because they tend to give you low reliability and poor quality service. Why?
Yes, you get more bandwidth, disk space, domain etc because you've paid them, but don't forget that you're sharing your resources with so many free users in there.
Typically, a free web host will squeeze as many as 1000 users (mixture of free and paid users with free users generally outnumbering paid users by 10 - 50 times) in a shared server to cut cost.
Can you imagine you're sharing a unit with so many free tenants who might hog the resources and cause a system malfunction, and in turn affect your website operation?
It only takes a few free users to abuse the resources and pull down your business, and you can imagine how much money you would have lost if you were running several moneymaking websites with that hosting company?
Also, because companies like that earn nothing from their free users, they need to raise their fee for paid hosting plan so as to cover for their maintenance, administration and operation of free hosting service.
To make matter worse, if you compare their prices against those paid web hosting companies, you would have found that paid web hosting companies actually cost lesser yet offer more powerful features, greater resources and robust server.
The main reason is because paid web hosting companies do not allow for any free hosting, and the few good ones carry only 50 - 150 users per server (others may house 100 - 250 users per server). By doing so, they're able to buy in more powerful server to ensure optimal server operation without raising the hosting fee.
Oh, did you notice that free web hosting companies normally only come with an email support service? Again, they want to save money. They can't afford to do what those reliable paid hosting companies are doing - offer live chat and phone support for 24/7 round the clock.
What if you have an urgent hosting issue that needs to be addressed instantly? Emailing them and waiting anxiously for their response can make you pee in your pants.
That's why in most of such free web hosts, you can barely find one that gives you high reliability, quality service and good price.
In whatever they do, their primary aim is to save as much cost while charging as high as possible in their paid hosting package to cover their daily operation for both free and paid hosting service.
So, if you want to run your web business profitably, never ever pay this kind of company to host your website.
Now, although I've hosted my websites with couple of free hosting companies before and getting substandard service from them, and seen my friends cursing and swearing at other free hosting providers for bringing problems to their websites, I've nothing against this type of hosting model.
But from the standpoint of a businessperson, it's just not wise and lucrative to host your website with them.
But that doesn't mean there's nothing good in free web hosting service. If you're hosting your website for some personal purpose and not on a business objective, then free web hosting would be your best option, provided you can tolerate them for sticking ads on your website and the ugly URL they issue to you.
Monthly or Yearly Hosting?
No matter how rock solid a review for a web hosting company is, bear this in mind, don't barge straight into a yearly plan. Pretty risky.
Yes, yearly hosting plan will save you some money up front. But if you don't test drive the service via monthly hosting first, you can easily get stuck with the web host that gives you chronic migraine for the rest of the remaining period before the one year contract ends.
Although monthly hosting costs you a few bucks more, it's best to test drive for two months before you commit yearly, so that you can quickly switch a web host without paying too dearly. The best review is your personal experience.
Don't rely solely on other reviews (even though they're genuine) to make your decision. Be rational. Even if it's a Ferrari, it's still wise to test drive before you buy.
Tip: Most free web hosts (and some paid web hosts) allow for yearly paid hosting only. That shows how lack of confidence they are. A good and reliable web host will offer both monthly and yearly options for you to choose from, coupled with money back guarantee. Usually the money back guarantee is 30 days. But very few good ones dare to offer 45 days. The longer the guarantee, the stronger is their confidence in their service and quality.
