Affordable Web Hosting - Choose A Web Host

Affordable Web Hosting - Picking Your Web Host

Affordable Web Hosting

Back when I first got started online back in the late 90s there was no such thing as affordable web hosting. At least, compared to today's standards there was no such thing. If you were able to pay less than $100/month for some space on a server, that was a bargain. These days you can get lease a dedicated server for that price.

But those days are behind us. These days it's easy to find affordable web hosting. The trick is to find a company that is reliable, provides excellent support, and will actually allow your business to expand.

Considerations beyond price when looking for Affordable Web Hosting:

Uptime

If a server is constantly down, it's going to cost you money. My bare minimum requirement for a host is 99% uptime and I actually prefer to only work with web hosts that have 99.9 % of better uptime.

Windows or Linux Hosting

Unless you have a specific reason (i.e. certain programs you know you need to run that require Windows hosting) for wanting Windows hosting, go with Linux. Many server programs won't run on a Windows server as they are written to run on Linux.

Control panel

You'll get a control panel to manage the backend of your server with nearly all hosting these days. The question is which one do you go with. Again, unless you have a good reason to do otherwise, go with a host running cPanel. It's easy and intuitive to work with.

Backups

Does the host you're going with make regular backups of their servers? While no business owner or webmaster should be relying only on their hosting companies to have backups, if the server fails, it's nice to know all your data wasn't lost and that it will be restored quickly. I was once a customer of a hosting companies who had a server fail. When I contacted them about why my server wasn't up, they were slow to reply and avoided telling me until the fifth time I asked that the server had actually failed. Despite the fact they said they had backups, they did not, and all the data on that server was lost. Needless to say their bargain basement pricing in this case was a very costly ordeal.

My Recommendation

I recommend Hostgator for those looking for and affordable web host. I've personally been a customer for nearly four years and have been incredibly satisfied with their service and pricing.

Two companies you may want to avoid:
Godaddy – great prices, but customer service is very poor
Yahoo – puts severe limits on what you can do with a website on their servers – takes forever to get a customer service rep on the phone and when you do they're apathetic.