Cheap Web Hosting - When Cheaper is Better
Anyone who has ever shopped for web hosting knows that you can spend anywhere from nothing up to several hundred dollars to host your web site. So what's the difference? Well often times if you're talking about typical shared web hosting in the $6 to $20 range nothing. That's right nothing! Nothing that is, except good old fashioned marketing and hype!
We compared standard features on 5 well known shared hosting accounts to see exactly what you get for your money and the results may surprise you. What we really care about in our test is probably what you would care about as a small business owner looking for hosting for a basic site: adequate disk space, ample email accounts, and reasonable bandwidth. We looked over all the other bells and whistles but weren't really willing to pay loads extra for them. We were also looking for a short term contract (monthly or quarterly) not a year or two commitment.
Upscale
Verio's Bronze Plan - (http://hosting.verio.com/index.php/unixwin_bronze.html)
Monthly Price (including set up fees) - $24.95 per month + free setup
Basic Specs 250 MB of diskspace, 7.5 GB of bandwidth, and 20 email accounts
Extra's Web design software, free domain pointing, Urchin web stats, free chat software
Our take If this were 1998 I might consider paying $24.95 for a package like thisoh wait, it's 2004.
Mid Tier
Interland's b100 Account - (http://www.interland.com/shared/bluehalo/?package=b100)
Monthly Price (including set up fees) - $12.95 per month + free setup
Basic Specs 250 MB of diskspace, 10 GB of bandwidth, and 30 email accounts
Extra's WebTrends web stats, access to log files, firewall protection
Our take This is one of the biggest brands in hosting and their prices have been reduced of late. Still pretty expensive compared to aggressive lower priced competitors.
SuperbHosting's U Power Service - (http://www.superbhosting.net/upower.php)
Monthly Price (including set up fees) - $12.50 per month + free setup
Basic Specs 1000 MB of diskspace, 50 GB of bandwidth, and 250 email accounts
Extra's Free domain, 30-day money back guarantee, daily data backups, free search engine submission, no content restrictions
Our take Another well known hosting service that seems to offer considerably more value in the mid-tier than other companies.
Cheap Hosting
IPowerWeb - (http://www.ipowerweb.com/products/webhosting/index.html)
Monthly Price (including set up fees) - $9.95 per month + $30 setup
Basic Specs 800 MB of diskspace, 40 GB of bandwidth, and 400 email accounts
Extra's $50 Google AdWords credit, money back guarantee, SSL included, unlimited email forwarding
Our take Often thought of as the low priced hosting leader. Their plans really shine when signing up for an annual account where the price drops to $7.95 per month.
HostSave Standard Hosting - (http://www.hostsave.com/hosting/plan_features.htm)
Monthly Price (including set up fees) - $8.95 per month + free setup
Basic Specs 1000 MB of diskspace, 100 GB of bandwidth, and 500 email accounts
Extra's Free MySQL database, catch-all email address, PERL v5, log file access
Our take This looks like the best deal for our basic needs. They have a big brand name and all the features we need plus the MySQL database thrown in.
Conclusions
You can pay a lot for basic shared web hosting you can also get it on the cheap. While certain specialty features might justify paying a premium, our analysis suggests that you can probably get the same specs maybe even better specs without paying more money. So for our hard earned bucks, cheaper is definitely better!
Cheap Web Hosting
Ever heard the saying "Penny-wise and Dollar-foolish"?
Well bargain priced website hosting may just represent the perfect example of watching a jar full of pennies while bucket loads of dollars fly out the window!
When I launched my first website (way back in the "dark ages" of 1997) I paid almost $150 a month in hosting and data transfer charges. My web host watched how many files I uploaded like a hawk and always seemed to send their hefty invoices earlier with each passing month.
I'm obviously not the only one who felt that way, because suddenly a whole industry of "bargain" web hosts sprang up all over the web.
On the surface they all sound great, especially when you think you can go from $150 a month down to $4.95 a month!
Five bucks a month sounds great, until you realize the amount of data transfer (number of page views) and bandwidth (the amount of data transfer your host allows in a given period) you get for that low price potentially hampers your ability to do business.
This realization - along with a panic attack and a quick lesson in calculating data transfer and bandwidth - usually comes at the least convenient time.
When you exceed your limits, a bargain host usually just shuts you down with no warning. Most webmasters realize they've made a mistake choosing a bargain host when their site suddenly loads a blank page in the middle of a big promotion traffic spike.
Believe me, everything just stops!
Here are a few bargain hosts that provide good service, but you need to carefully check the fine print for how much bandwidth they allow.
(www.FeaturePrice.com) For about $24.95 a month you get to host up to six independent websites with a single account. You get unlimited data storage, unlimited email and a variety of other higher end services, but their bandwidth policy seems hard to understand.
They did shut me down when we had a moderate level of success even though I paid them an extra $300 to get what they called "maximum" bandwidth. I was NOT pleased and promptly moved the site (http://www.7dayebook.com) to another host.
(www.HostSave.com) Host Save is another low price hosting company that delivers a wide range of services for only $6.95 per month. They recently raised their allowable data transfer, but their policy on how much bandwidth you can use at a given time seems non-existent.
(www.DotEasy.com) For $25 DotEasy offers a domain name purchase along with one year's hosting. Sounds incredible until you read the fine print to discover they limit you to 1 Gigabyte of data transfer a month. Not much data once you start getting reasonable site traffic.
The moral here?
Either prepare to have your business shut down mid-stream if you get successful, or pay a few extra bucks each month to ensure you have enough bandwidth and data transfer to operate without any service interruptions.
At a minimum, specifically ask about and read the fine print regarding the host's policies before it's too late!
Cheap web hosting: What to look for and What to stay away from?
Bargains for sale, Unlimited Hosting for only a Dollar.
Get your hosting here, 50 cents for the first three months.
Use now. Pay later.
In today's world of hosting, instead of who's got the bigger and better thing, it's who has it for the cheapest and don't forget that they usually it at an unlimited level. But if everyone is offering the same control panel, running off of the same type of servers or even from the same data center, why not get it for the cheapest price you can? The reason is, even though the servers may be the same, the service varies with each company and price. This is not to say that the cheapest can't offer the best service but always remember the old adage you get what you pay for.
Let's break down the costs involved with running a small hosting company that manages a few, low-cost servers from a reputable data center. The dedicated server business has grown within the last few years and competition has created the availability of unmanaged, low-cost server rentals that can range as low as $49 per month.
For our case study, let's pretend that Bob has leased a server from a reputable data center at an average price of $89 per month. He was even lucky enough to signup during a special that waived the setup fees. At a cost of $89, he now has his own dedicated Unix server running one of the more popular control panels that regular hosting customers like to use. Like many small one or two-man hosting companies, he runs the business out of his house as it would be almost impossible to actually obtain office space on location of the data center, not to mention that he could be in one state and the server might be three states over. Leasing a dedicated server means that he is not responsible for the hardware and only has to maintain the software. This frees Bob up from the added expenses of hardware replacement and allows him to concentrate his investment on marketing, software, scripts and service.
Bob is an extremely good salesman and has a mature understanding of how to run a business. His best friend Billy has a vast knowledge of managing a server and its software, so together; they will be able to manage most common aspects of the business on a day to day basis.
They have purchased or designed a nice website and spent the average of $600 for support items such as tutorials and a customer forum. With the website design and extras, their initial investment averaged at $1000 which they hope to recoup within the first six months of operation. Now, this may be an added cost that some small hosting companies avoid at the beginning, but try to remember, if they are serious about running a company, they will put some type of investment into it. Taking the initial investment spread over 6 months and adding the cost of servers at $89 for the first one, Billy and Bob are spending more than $250 monthly during the first six months of operation on minimum expenses. This does not include other expenses such as their salaries and outside expenses such as phone bills (if they offer phone support), utilities, advertising expenses, etc.
An average amount of customers or domains to have on an individual server is 200 and since Bob is starting out with a new company and no customers, he can acquire 25-30 customers monthly if he works really hard at it. To fill a server, they would need eight months of growth, and that doesn't include the costs involved during that time. The cost of operation during those eight months is estimated at $1700, without any extra expenses and no personal income derived from the venture. If they were to charge $2 per customer on a recurring monthly basis and signed up 25 customers per month, they'd make $100 profit at the end of 8 months. Remember, this is done without any personal income made at all. Once they add in an advertising budget and allotment for person income for Bob and Billy, the cost jumps dramatically. They aren't in the business to make friends, they are in it to make money and $100 spread over eight months is not much.
Let's start adding a small income for Bob and Billy of $1000 monthly each and an advertising budget of $500 per month in order to acquire those customers and calculate what they need to charge to break even after those first eight months. A safe estimate would be $3,000 monthly to cover salaries, server cost, advertising and other miscellaneous items. If they were able to signup 200 customers during the first eight months, they would need to charge $15 per customer to cover the $3000 monthly overhead. If they charged only $2 per customer, they would need to signup an estimate of 2,000 customers to do the same. Because Bob and Billy decided to charge only $2 per customer, they have to support 2,000 customers by themselves because they don't have enough profit to hire any more technicians.
As a customer, you need to realize these things before you start shopping for a hosting company. Now that you are educated on the backend of a hoster's life, you can ask yourself what type of company do you want hosting your website and what kind of website you need hosted. If you are running a small personal site that doesn't need constant uptime and special scripts, then you could choose one of the many free or low cost hosting solutions available. If the company was to go under or lost all of your information due to hardware or software failure, then you are really not at a lost because your website did not contain critical information.
But what if your site does contain critical information and is the lifeblood of your company? Then don't go cheap. Research your options, find the one with the best solutions and don't be afraid to spend more for less. It is very important to find a stable company with quality support and service and that doesn't come cheap. Make sure that if your information is critical, the company offers reliable backup solutions and has a reasonable uptime.
Phone support is a must for quick response and let's not forget the numbers 24/7. Hosting companies with higher price tags can afford to hire the extra technicians to hold your hand as you build your web presence and your company, which can be important in today's market.
But does all of this mean that cheap hosting is a bad venture and should be avoided? Not really, just remember, You get what you paid for.
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