Which Web Hosting Is Right

If you’re in search of a web host, you’d probably find this to be a daunting task. With all the web hosting providers out there offering their web hosting services, it’s hard to find the right one especially if this is your first time to buy web hosting. With all the terms they use and all the features you are not yet familiar with, it would feel like you’re in a foreign land and you’re still in need of some kind of translations. But, don’t fret. All you really need is to have a goal, an idea of what you really need from your web hosting provider.

You must ask yourself, what are your goals with your preferred hosting provider? Would you need the web hosting for a personal website or will it be for a business site?  How high the traffic will you be expecting for your website? These are questions you need to answer so you’ll have an idea as to what web hosting is right for your needs. You don’t need to go beyond what is necessary and pay unnecessary money for something you won’t really need when cheap hosting is available. As you may have noticed as you browse through the numbers of best web hosting providers, they have different ranges with bandwidths and web space. For a much more ambitious website, you would need a higher bandwidth and web space to accommodate all your files and the heavy traffic you are expecting to hit your site.

Price and Web Hosting

Price is always a factor in choosing web hosts. You would be fooling yourself if you told yourself otherwise (unless you have lots of money to burn). However, higher prices do not mean that you'll get a good web host. Higher prices do, however, mean that you have a better chance of getting good support, since at least they will have the money to hire more staff if they want to.

There is always a trade-off. At least for me. There's no way I can afford to put all my sites on my "ideal" web hosts. For sites that are not so critical, I am willing to pay a cheaper price at the cost of a little more "down" time and inconvenience than my more important sites.

In general, if you run a business on the web, you will not want to take that kind of risk. Bad support and "down" times have a habit of occurring at the worst possible moments (such as during your peak ordering seasons).

One (cheap) host (not listed above) that used to house one of my non-critical "play" sites has had over a period of a few months numerous problems: repeated periods of "down" times (sometimes running even for hours with them not only unaware of the situation but also unreachable), email problems (their email system was down so mail from my visitors could not reach me), FTP problems, and so on. If you're running a business, I suggest that you weigh the costs of your site being down against the cost of paying a few dollars extra per month for a good web host. When your site is "down", you will lose your sales and customers for that period. If you're earning from your website, it may be worth your while to pay those extra dollars. After all, as long as your site is "up", you stand the chance of getting additional sales which will more than make up for the extra cost of a few bucks. Remember: no site, no sale.

As for free web hosts: you just got to swallow whatever you're dished out. Support is often non-existent for free web hosts. It never ceases to amaze me to hear from people who complain of free web hosts that have lousy service. You didn't pay a cent, so what do you expect? Frankly, I don't recommend that you run a business site on a free web host. Hobby sites and personal sites are probably okay. You might still want to consider getting your own domain name though. If you don't know why this is so, see my article, Is it Possible to Create a Website Without Buying a Domain Name? The High Price of "Free"..

My personal policy, however, is that if it's an important site, don't be penny-wise and pound-foolish. Saving one or two dollars per month is not worth the loss of a few hundred or a few thousand dollars when your site goes down.

Posted in: Best Web Hosting