Understanding the Costs of Web Hosting for Your First Website
In the plainest words possible, web hosting is the service you need to make your web pages and all web content accessible through the Internet. Anybody will be able to remotely access your website only when it’s hosted somewhere. All your web content needs to be stored on a secure web server.
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Without deep diving into complicated web hosting concepts, let’s quickly transition through the most important issues, concerns, tips and tricks, and information bits you need to be aware of in your search for a cheap web hosting service.
~Right from free web hosting to highly expensive monthly chargeable hosting plans ($100 and up), there’s the complete pricing spectrum for you to explore.
~Your hosting plan could come with some astounding features (which, of course, will be charged); however, you might not need all of them!
~Web hosting is not something wherein you can compromise on service quality in lieu of dirt cheap rates (why even pay $1/month when your website is not even accessible half the day because of being hosted on an overloaded server?). Providers like Arvixe web hosting use their own web servers, offering you disk space and data transfer options.
Balancing utility and expenses to find the most appropriately priced hosting service
Remember this: finding a cheap web hosting service is not a matter of luck. Given a set of requirements (in terms of hosting features and the money you’re ready to spend), you will always have a service that’s the ‘closest match’. It’s important that you clearly understand your core requirements and nice-to-have features, and obtain the cheapest service that fulfills the core requirements and accommodates a fair number of the nice-to-haves.
Not more than five to seven years ago, web users became excited upon hearing hosting plans with monthly charges of around $8. Today, you can easily find hosting services beginning from $1.95/month. But, are these virtually free hosting deals useful? More importantly, how do you balance ‘cheap’ and ‘useful’? Here are some important pointers to help you work out the answer for yourself.
~Check the details of the deal in terms of the resources you will be provided. Today, unlimited bandwidth, add-on domains, and disk space are the norm with all kinds of hosting plans, but you might want to read into the fine prints associated with ‘unlimited’.
~A web host that’s able to empower 30+ moderately active domains with support for web stats, mail and web services, PHP and MySQL updates, installations of scripts on an automated basis, 99.5% or more uptime, and has good customer support reviews is what you want to go with, even if it means paying $5 instead of $2 per month.
~Consider paying the added dollar or more if your website needs additional services such as SSL certification, dedicated IP, automated malware scans, periodic backups, and more.
Image: Freedigitalphotos.net/Miles
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Another thing to be wary of regarding “free” hosting setups is that you may NOT actually own your website/blog’s web address. So you are at the mercy of your host. So I would, as a basic baseline, make sure that what you end up with is a blog address that goes: http://www.yourblogname.xxx.
And good luck with the blogging!