Web Hosting Reviews & Ratings

February 03, 2011

Deciding Whether or Not to Use Cheap Web Hosting

The majority of novice webmasters begin their online endeavors by searching for a cheap web hosting plan, ultimately choosing a shared plan that costs less than seven dollars per month in most cases. Unfortunately, after using such a plan for a few months, many webmasters realize that it is not extensive enough to meet their ongoing and ever expanding needs. This is especially true for online business owners whose goal is to build a network of websites that generate residual income.

Although cheap web hosting does have its downfalls, there are times when it is indeed the perfect solution. The following information should help you decide whether or not to utilize cheap web hosting services based on your needs, status, and preferences as a webmaster.

Number of Websites

If you already own or plan on building a network of websites, then you should know that a cheap web hosting plan will probably not provide enough server resources to adequately host your network of sites. Most cheap web hosting plans operate within the shared web hosting environment, which requires you to share a single Web server with dozens or even hundreds of other webmasters. This can become a problem when the server is overloaded with traffic, as bandwidth runs low and the performance of your websites ultimately suffer. Since you'll be sharing a Web server with other webmasters, their websites will be located on IP addresses that are within the same range as yours. This means that your site can be taken off-line or penalized for the actions of another webmaster pertaining to a website that is completely unrelated to yours. Thus, if you are planning on building a large number of websites, you'll want to consider VPS or dedicated hosting as a starting point.

Webmaster Skills and Software Requirements

Surprisingly, cheap web hosting is also usually the easiest to use, as many cheap web hosting providers offer tutorials and built-in videos within the web hosting control panel that walk you through the process of various administrative tasks. More expensive web hosting plans also provide such documentation, however using a dedicated server or a virtual private server partition is a bit more complex than utilizing a simple shared hosting plan. If you have the need to install and utilize web applications on your web server, then you won't be able to use shared hosting, as you are not allowed to change the software configuration of a shared server.

Budget and Upfront Costs

Although it may seem as if shared web hosting would be the best solution for a webmaster on a budget, in reality the upfront costs are actually just as much, if not more for a shared web hosting plan as they are for a VPS plan. This is because most shared hosting providers require at least a year of payments up front, which (at seven dollars per month) would amount to about $84 plus fees as a start up cost. On the other hand, VPS hosting plans (which vary widely in cost from $10 to $200 depending on the amount of server resources included with the plan) allow the webmaster to pay on a monthly basis, and therefore have a cheaper start up cost.

Tags: Cheap Web Hosting,  network of websites,  cheap hosting,  server resources,  shared web hosting