When it comes to running a website, web hosting is a cost which often cannot be avoided. Along with paying for your website to be designed and maintained, buying a domain name and signing up for web hosting is all vital to the smooth running, profitability and professionalism or your website. However, most business and website owners also often want to cut costs, leading them to a range of cheaper web hosting options. However, is cheap, or free web hosting ever a good idea?
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Free Web Hosting
Many website owners make the mistake of going for free web hosting. It’s understandable, too – after all, if you can get something for free, then why pay for it? But, when choosing web hosting, it’s crucial to understand that the amount which you pay – or don’t pay – is vital when it comes to the quality of the service which you receive. The type of web hosting you opt for has a huge effect on your site speed and performance, something which can directly gain or lose you customers. Free web hosting doesn’t have a good reputation for good site performance and is often subsidized by ads on your site; therefore, it should be avoided altogether.
Cheap vs. Cost Effective
If you’re looking through a list of the best web hosts, you’ll notice that they all offer a range of different features and services for the price that they charge. When looking at web hosting options, it’s a good idea to go into it looking for the host which is the most cost effective, rather than the cheapest. For example, you could pay $5 per month for a service which doesn’t offer customer support and is shared with other users, or $7 per month for a cloud hosting service which offers round-the-clock customer support and has an awesome reputation. In this case, it’s definitely worth it to go for the more expensive option.
Cheap Won’t Always Save Costs
Many business owners make the mistake of opting for a really cheap hosting service thinking that it will save costs for them over time. And whilst it certainly may be true that a lower priced hosting service will bring your monthly expenses down, it’s important to understand that a cheap, low-quality hosting service could end up causing problems for you and your business which are expensive to repair. For example, if you opt for a service which goes down a lot and leaves your business website inactive for hours or days at a time, you could end up losing out on a lot of profit as customers can’t get on your site.
What to Look For
It’s definitely possible to get an affordable, reasonably priced hosting service which offers a lot of great features. When looking for a web host, it’s crucial to choose one which offers round the clock customer support for your site and has a good reputation. Rather than simply picking the host with the cheapest price, opt for one which has great customer reviews.
Cheaply priced web hosting can be a great idea if the host offers everything that your website needs!
