How To: Find Cheap Website Hosting

What is Hosting?

Hosting is online storage for the files that make up your website. You must have hosting in order for people to view your website on the internet.

Website hosting fees vary from one provider to another. Typical prices range from $6-$20 per month for shared hosting, $40-$100 per month for a virtual private server, and $100-$600 per month for a dedicated server.

Dirt Cheap Web Designs recommends BlueHost as the hosting provider of choice for reliability, low price, great value, awesome features and excellent support!

 

How to compare cheap website hosting plans

Finding a great website hosting company is more clear cut than trying to choose a website designer. Most hosting providers list exactly what's included in each hosting plan so you can compare apples to apples. Here are some tips and secrets I've learned over the years...

• Not all hosting companies are created equal.
  Local phone companies and small town providers have difficulty competing with larger nationwide companies that are dedicated to providing website hosting. Often these smaller companies offer excellent customer service and one-on-one planning to make up for their inevitably higher prices. Just as important as customer service is the company's reliability including years in business, high quality equipment and fast data connections.
• Linux vs. Windows Plans
  This is a simple choice. It's almost always easier to migrate an existing website from a Linux server to a Windows server, than the other way around. That's because the PHP programming language is often supported on both Linux and Windows plans, while the ASP.NET programming language is only usable on a Windows server. When in doubt, ask your website developer! If you don't have a developer, go with the Linux/Unix plan.
• Shared vs. Virtual Private vs. Dedicated
  This refers to how many customer accounts (websites) are stored on each server. Shared servers often hold several hundred or more accounts each. Dedicated servers are just that - dedicated to one customer. Virtual private servers bridge the gap between shared and dedicated hosting are an affordable alternative for fast-growing businesses.
  
  • I strongly recommend that businesses avoid "free" hosting services such as GeoCities. They may be "free" or "dirt cheap" but you'll probably spend more hours and dollars trying to get your website to work the way you want, than you would have spent if you'd upgraded to a better hosting provider or hosting plan.
  • A good choice for most small businesses and non-profits are Unix-based shared servers such as those offered by Bluehost. Many of these even include "website building tools" for do-it-yourselfers.
  • Businesses that have very active websites or need more control over the server should look for virtual private or dedicated servers.
• Unlimited storage and transfer
  This is a gimmick, sort of. Storage is cheap nowadays and hosting providers are really looking at how much of their server resources you're using. So if you're suddenly getting 1,000,000 hits per day, you will get kicked off of your shared hosting plan. The flip side of the coin is that, incredibly, some companies still limit their hosting plans to 500MB or less of storage with similar limits on transfer. So while "unlimited storage" and "unlimited transfer" don't necessarily mean "unlimited usage", if you see unreasonably low numbers (say, less than 1GB of storage) then it's probably time to look for another hosting plan. The only exception to this is when you're purchasing a dedicated server plan... but those plans are in a completely different ballpark and cost hundreds of dollars per month.
• Website marketing ploys - "FREE ADVERTISING CREDITS"
  A popular addition to hosting plans these days is the "marketing tools" section. These offers of free credit towards new search engine ad campaigns allow you to test the waters of Search Engine Marketing. Don't be overly swayed by these hosting plan additions... they are a nice bonus feature, but $25 or $50 will not get you very far in your ad campaign. It's best to do some research before launching your marketing campaign, or hire a search engine promotion company to do the leg work for you. That way you'll get the most out of those free credits.
• Get an expert opinion
  Once you've narrowed down your choice of hosting providers to just one or two companies, visit WebHostingTalk or the Developers Shed forums and ask for feedback from the people who know hosting best... the developers who work with websites every day.

What NOT to do:

• Don't sign up for hosting without consulting your developer. If you have a website designer/developer or are planning to hire one, wait on the hosting until you can talk to him/her about your choices.
• Don't expect more from your hosting plan than what's listed. You may assume that a feature will be included in your plan, only to find out later that there's an extra fee for it. Services that are commonly NOT included are SSL certificates and dedicated IP addresses (required for eCommerce websites). Some features may be limited such as the number of FTP accounts, email accounts, and MySQL or SQL databases. Also be sure to check if your domain name will be included in the price, or if it must be registered for an additional fee.