Is it clever to get the cheapest possible web host?
Probably the first thing that comes to mind when renting a webspace for the first time is the price. You probably might ask yourself: Why shouldn’t I get the cheapest webspace, I don’t need all this rubbish, I just want to get my website online – NOW!
Well, in this case we recommend staying calm, taking a deep breath, you’ll be glad to invest some time beforehand and save a lot of troubles later on.
Of course I wouldn’t ask the question this way if the answer is as simple as: “Yes, it is!” Although the question is legitimate there are a few points that might darken your enjoyment.
Low price = low quality?
Low price sometimes goes hand in hand with low quality or restrictions in services, that’s for sure. As I mentioned in my blogpost “Important criteria for renting a webspace” there are some basic features you might want to have, such as customer support, enough webspace/traffic or common web technologies. In case you don’t know yet, I would advise you to read the post mentioned above.
But if your requirements are quite standard you shouldn’t have to pay much more than $ 5 / month and be happy with it and this does not necessarily mean a lack of quality.
Free web hosting services
Why pay $ 5 per month if you can get it for free? There are several web hosting services at no charge, but if you want to run a professional website, keep your hands off of free web hosting services! The only thing you’ll get is a subdomain or a crappy, spammy looking top-level domain with a webspace full of ads and low page load times, etc.
If you don’t need a domain you’d probably be happy with one of the blog services available for free.
Finally we can summarize that professional web hosting has its price – even though you can get valuable services at a low charge.