Web Hosting Guide

The average consumer today is fairly savvy. Regardless of whether they are shopping for high ticket electronics or simply choosing a food item, more and more consumers are well-educated and they comparison shop to find the best price. However, no consumer is willing to truly sacrifice quality for price, especially in markets where you simply don't have to.

When it comes to web hosting, many purchasers of hosting accounts are not aware that better service may be available. In fact, most web hosting consumers acknowledge how little they pay every month and they often believe that at the price point they receive, it may not be possible to find more competitive rates

If made aware, many web hosting customers will gladly change web hosts immediately once they learn that there is affordable web hosting which charges less, yet provides the customer with a feature rich and fully supported web hosting solution.

What is Cheap Web Hosting?

Cheap web hosting is the bottom of the barrel when it comes to web hosting. These companies may be resellers or simply companies that are designed around one element of web hosting: price. Even then, they may not really be the cheapest and they certainly aren't going to be considered the best either.

Because companies that specialize in cheap web hosting know their customer base is likely first time web hosting customers or customers who really have no other concerns but price and basic functionality, they will often offer amazing prices, yet this comes with a catch.

One of the typical catches from cheap web hosting companies include super-low first year pricing and a big jump in price for the second year. Another place they will capitalize is with expensive add-ons; from higher than usual pricing for adding new domains to having paid-only applications or add-ons and requiring the customer to upgrade to access them or even a la carte pricing on applications that are really freeware.

The Dark Side to Cheap Web Hosting

The other half of the dark side of cheap web hosting is the poor support that these companies give. Often times, their downtime records are abysmal. The industry standard for downtime is less than one percent of the time. For people who do not know this statistic, they may think that weekly server outages of a couple hours are acceptable or, depending on what they are using web hosting for, may not be bothered by it. On top of this, tech support may be via email only or there may be an additional charge for tech support.

With email support, there is a good chance of not receiving a reply for up to 48 business hours. The person who is trying to upload a new web page on a Saturday would have to wait until Monday for a reply.

Making the Argument for Affordable Web Hosting

Affordable web hosting just makes sense. The cost for affordable web hosting, whether comparing month to month rates or yearly rates, is only slightly higher than the basic price of many cheap hosting solutions. The best part about the cost of affordable web hosting is that there are many fewer fees outside of the regular monthly payments. There will be a charge to add a domain name but the cost will be quite a bit less and much more in-line with the price that would be charged from a domain registration service.

Additional benefits include free plug-in, typically including database/basic customer management software and web publishing software such as WordPress which are incredibly useful and power pieces of server-based software that many people realize they need, oftentimes after they receive web hosting. Many of the web hosting companies in this arena also provide easy, template based web page creation services as part of the package to help the customer get started.

The other place where affordable web hosting companies really shine is in the customer service and support areas of their business. They often hold themselves to the less than 1% downtime standard. They can afford to be more on diligent because they are typically larger companies. Due to their size, they can also afford to have better technical support.

With most affordable web hosting solutions, phone-based technical support is available, oftentimes available twenty-four hours, seven days a week, including holidays. Problems then, become fixed in a matter of minutes rather than hours.

Affordable web hosting is the better value

The reality is that cheap web hosting is a false economy. While it may seem cheaper, it ultimately costs more when it is all said and done. Between the costs for adding products and services as well as additional downtime, cheap web hosting does not look as good as it once did. Most consumers, once they realize that they can do better, change over to affordable but full-featured web hosting companies as soon as they can.