The very obvious attraction of cheap hosting is that...err it's cheap!
But what is hardly ever discussed are the hidden costs of cheap web hosting which could quite literally drain your pocket dry!
So first and foremost you should learn to differentiate budget hosting from cheap hosting though they both technically fall under the category of cheap web hosting!
Budget hosting classically ranges from $5 - $9 and is generally quite reliable whereas cheap hosting falls within the $2.75 - $3.50 dollar range!
The following list highlights some of the more common problems associated with cheap web hosting:
1. Increased Website Downtime
2. Poor Server Response
3. Very Attractive To Spammers
4. Susceptible To Search Engine Ban
5. Lack of Customer Support
6. Fly-By-Night Risk
7. Exposure To Infections (Viruses, Trojans etc.)
Let me elaborate in a bit more detail about these little discussed hidden costs that almost always invariably plague cheap hosting:
1. Increased Website Downtime
One of the more common problems associated with cheap hosting is the increased frequency of website downtime; in other words the amount of time when your website is not available!
This often occurs with cheap web hosting services because all too commonly there are way too many websites sharing a single server. It doesn't take a genius to figure out the longer your site is down (in other words unavailable) the more business and traffic you lose.
2. Poor Server Response
Another issue common to cheap hosting arises (as mentioned above in point 1) because of the huge number of websites loaded on a single server.
The end result of overloading a particular server with too many websites is that it greatly magnifies the server response time. This happens whenever multiple browser requests are conducted at the same time for a large number of sites hosted on the same server!
The end result of this means that if a person tried to connect to your website they will experience the hanging browser phenomenon (a browser that takes forever to connect to a queried site). Once again you don't have to be a genius to figure out most people will rather abandon their attempt to access your site than wait forever!
3. Cheap Hosting Acts Like A Spammer Magnet!
Cheap hosting is very attractive to spammers for the very obvious reason that it is cheap! You see web spammers make their money by commanding an empire of thousands of sites, each one of which makes some money and though that amount on its own may be insignificant when totaled as a whole becomes quite substantial!
Obviously to increase their profit margin spammers need to keep their expenses as minimal as possible which undoubtedly includes cheap web hosting!
Sharing hosting with spammer sites in and of itself does not necessarily jeopardize your website but if your cheap hosting service happens to host thousands of those spammer sites then sooner than later your website is going to get:
4. Penalized/Banned By The Search Engines (The Bad Neighborhood Phenomenon)
Okay let's consider a situation where your website happens to be sharing the same server as that of thousands of spammer sites. In such a scenario there is a very good chance that somewhere down the line your website will get penalized (or even banned) by Google when invariably those spammer sites with which your site is sharing cheap hosting get involved in search engine malpractice.
You see when your website is hosted on the same server as other sites (shared hosting) you share the same root IP address as those other sites, and when a search engine gets fed up with spamming from a certain IP address it doesn't bother going into details to weed out which specific domain is the culprit, it simply bans the entire IP address. OUCH!
Having your website tossed from the search engines can be a very traumatic experience especially if that website had been ranking well for keywords you had spent time and money optimizing for.
This by the way is not a hypothetical situation and actually happened to me not to mention the thousands others who have had the misfortune of suffering the same experience!
5. Lack Of Customer Support
One of the means with which cheap hosting services keep their prices dirt-cheap low is by cutting corners on essential services like customer support.
If your site happens to be parked on some cheap web hosting server and you get into a jam that needs urgent attention, then the following lists a number of very practical options you can pursue:
a) Cross your fingers and mumble juju to voodoo the problem away (just kidding)
b) Contact customer support and say a prayer while hoping for the best but expecting the worst. The worst in this case being a very, very long wait before you get a reply...if at all!
c) Be prepared to pay a hefty fee to get any help at all; that hefty fee is usually in the region of $20 - $35! Management rightfully figures that if your cheaply-hosted site is doing well and gets a problem, then you'll probably be very willing to shell out a $35 fee to fix that $2.95 per month hosted site of yours!
6. Fly-By-Night Risk
If you have spent any length of time online then I am sure you know how fickle transactions online can be. So it shouldn't come as a big surprise that there are no lack of companies that are here-one-day and gone-the-next.
In the business such companies are called fly-by-night for obvious reasons and the cheap hosting arena is no stranger to this phenomenon. A lot of cheap hosting services fall under the category of fly-by-night not because they are necessarily out to dupe you from the get-go, but because eventually it dawns on them that their profit margins do not make for a viable business model.
What this means to you is that one morning you could wake up to find that your hosting service has simply vanished in thin air! Once again there is no need to point out how painful this can be if your site had started performing well!
Once again this all boils down to sharing the same server as countless other websites managed by a hosting service that cannot afford state-of-the-art defense software! If any one of those thousand of websites on that server gets an infection it can spill over to all the rest including yours, like an unchecked influenza pandemic!
What If Any Benefits Do You Get From Cheap Hosting?
Okay despite the bleak picture I have painted above it's not all bad news as far as cheap hosting is concerned because vast improvements have been made over the past few years. Just so long as you conduct your due diligence (research) there is absolutely no reason why you cannot acquire a good quality cheap hosting plan. It is a well known fact that competition in any business drives down prices and the web hosting arena is no different.
In fact it is actually a mandatory requirement for any web hosting business of today that wishes to grow and continue to be competitive to offer cheap hosting services! Why? Because there is way too much competition to afford to do otherwise!
There Is Cheap Hosting. And Then There Is Cheap Hosting!
If you are going to opt for cheap hosting it obviously makes sense to get your service from a well established and reputable web hosting company that has a proven track record rather than some spotty hosting company that is little known! I mean cummon...does it make sense to go for a $2.75 cheap hosting plan from an unknown web host rather than opt for a slightly more expensive option of $4.95 from a well-known company that you know will still be around in a few months?
Because of their sheer size an established web hosting company is going to be able to provide state-of-the-art services like defense software even for a budget hosting plan, something an upstart web host certainly won't! One final consideration you should take into account when opting for a cheap hosting plan is whether your web host provides a means for you to upgrade your plan seamlessly if the need ever arises.
That need will certainly arise when the traffic volume of your website (bandwidth usage) exceeds the capacity allotted it in your current plan. Ideally you want to be able to upgrade from a shared server to a dedicated server with minimal downtime and as smoothly and painlessly as possible.
Source : http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard
But what is hardly ever discussed are the hidden costs of cheap web hosting which could quite literally drain your pocket dry!
So first and foremost you should learn to differentiate budget hosting from cheap hosting though they both technically fall under the category of cheap web hosting!
Budget hosting classically ranges from $5 - $9 and is generally quite reliable whereas cheap hosting falls within the $2.75 - $3.50 dollar range!
The following list highlights some of the more common problems associated with cheap web hosting:
1. Increased Website Downtime
2. Poor Server Response
3. Very Attractive To Spammers
4. Susceptible To Search Engine Ban
5. Lack of Customer Support
6. Fly-By-Night Risk
7. Exposure To Infections (Viruses, Trojans etc.)
Let me elaborate in a bit more detail about these little discussed hidden costs that almost always invariably plague cheap hosting:
1. Increased Website Downtime
One of the more common problems associated with cheap hosting is the increased frequency of website downtime; in other words the amount of time when your website is not available!
This often occurs with cheap web hosting services because all too commonly there are way too many websites sharing a single server. It doesn't take a genius to figure out the longer your site is down (in other words unavailable) the more business and traffic you lose.
2. Poor Server Response
Another issue common to cheap hosting arises (as mentioned above in point 1) because of the huge number of websites loaded on a single server.
The end result of overloading a particular server with too many websites is that it greatly magnifies the server response time. This happens whenever multiple browser requests are conducted at the same time for a large number of sites hosted on the same server!
The end result of this means that if a person tried to connect to your website they will experience the hanging browser phenomenon (a browser that takes forever to connect to a queried site). Once again you don't have to be a genius to figure out most people will rather abandon their attempt to access your site than wait forever!
3. Cheap Hosting Acts Like A Spammer Magnet!
Cheap hosting is very attractive to spammers for the very obvious reason that it is cheap! You see web spammers make their money by commanding an empire of thousands of sites, each one of which makes some money and though that amount on its own may be insignificant when totaled as a whole becomes quite substantial!
Obviously to increase their profit margin spammers need to keep their expenses as minimal as possible which undoubtedly includes cheap web hosting!
Sharing hosting with spammer sites in and of itself does not necessarily jeopardize your website but if your cheap hosting service happens to host thousands of those spammer sites then sooner than later your website is going to get:
4. Penalized/Banned By The Search Engines (The Bad Neighborhood Phenomenon)
Okay let's consider a situation where your website happens to be sharing the same server as that of thousands of spammer sites. In such a scenario there is a very good chance that somewhere down the line your website will get penalized (or even banned) by Google when invariably those spammer sites with which your site is sharing cheap hosting get involved in search engine malpractice.
You see when your website is hosted on the same server as other sites (shared hosting) you share the same root IP address as those other sites, and when a search engine gets fed up with spamming from a certain IP address it doesn't bother going into details to weed out which specific domain is the culprit, it simply bans the entire IP address. OUCH!
Having your website tossed from the search engines can be a very traumatic experience especially if that website had been ranking well for keywords you had spent time and money optimizing for.
This by the way is not a hypothetical situation and actually happened to me not to mention the thousands others who have had the misfortune of suffering the same experience!
5. Lack Of Customer Support
One of the means with which cheap hosting services keep their prices dirt-cheap low is by cutting corners on essential services like customer support.
If your site happens to be parked on some cheap web hosting server and you get into a jam that needs urgent attention, then the following lists a number of very practical options you can pursue:
a) Cross your fingers and mumble juju to voodoo the problem away (just kidding)
b) Contact customer support and say a prayer while hoping for the best but expecting the worst. The worst in this case being a very, very long wait before you get a reply...if at all!
c) Be prepared to pay a hefty fee to get any help at all; that hefty fee is usually in the region of $20 - $35! Management rightfully figures that if your cheaply-hosted site is doing well and gets a problem, then you'll probably be very willing to shell out a $35 fee to fix that $2.95 per month hosted site of yours!
6. Fly-By-Night Risk
If you have spent any length of time online then I am sure you know how fickle transactions online can be. So it shouldn't come as a big surprise that there are no lack of companies that are here-one-day and gone-the-next.
In the business such companies are called fly-by-night for obvious reasons and the cheap hosting arena is no stranger to this phenomenon. A lot of cheap hosting services fall under the category of fly-by-night not because they are necessarily out to dupe you from the get-go, but because eventually it dawns on them that their profit margins do not make for a viable business model.
What this means to you is that one morning you could wake up to find that your hosting service has simply vanished in thin air! Once again there is no need to point out how painful this can be if your site had started performing well!
Once again this all boils down to sharing the same server as countless other websites managed by a hosting service that cannot afford state-of-the-art defense software! If any one of those thousand of websites on that server gets an infection it can spill over to all the rest including yours, like an unchecked influenza pandemic!
What If Any Benefits Do You Get From Cheap Hosting?
Okay despite the bleak picture I have painted above it's not all bad news as far as cheap hosting is concerned because vast improvements have been made over the past few years. Just so long as you conduct your due diligence (research) there is absolutely no reason why you cannot acquire a good quality cheap hosting plan. It is a well known fact that competition in any business drives down prices and the web hosting arena is no different.
In fact it is actually a mandatory requirement for any web hosting business of today that wishes to grow and continue to be competitive to offer cheap hosting services! Why? Because there is way too much competition to afford to do otherwise!
There Is Cheap Hosting. And Then There Is Cheap Hosting!
If you are going to opt for cheap hosting it obviously makes sense to get your service from a well established and reputable web hosting company that has a proven track record rather than some spotty hosting company that is little known! I mean cummon...does it make sense to go for a $2.75 cheap hosting plan from an unknown web host rather than opt for a slightly more expensive option of $4.95 from a well-known company that you know will still be around in a few months?
Because of their sheer size an established web hosting company is going to be able to provide state-of-the-art services like defense software even for a budget hosting plan, something an upstart web host certainly won't! One final consideration you should take into account when opting for a cheap hosting plan is whether your web host provides a means for you to upgrade your plan seamlessly if the need ever arises.
That need will certainly arise when the traffic volume of your website (bandwidth usage) exceeds the capacity allotted it in your current plan. Ideally you want to be able to upgrade from a shared server to a dedicated server with minimal downtime and as smoothly and painlessly as possible.
Source : http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard
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