Cheap Web Hosting Isn’t Everything

Everybody wants a deal. I understand that. I also understand that most people don’t have hundreds of extra dollars every month to spend on hosting a website. However, if you value your website like you do your business then you should not make a web hosting decision based solely on cost. Cheap web hosting, while a viable option for personal, low traffic websites, might not be the best option for your business web page.

Your business website should first corner around being reliable. A business website is a 24/7 storefront where customers are going to be attempting to access your products, services, and business information. If you choose a host based on cost instead of reliability you may find your website down quite often. This means that potential customers can’t get what they’re looking for from you and end up going somewhere else. This could end up costing you a lot more in the long run than the money you saved on your web hosting.

Cheap web hosting also has a tendency of being very limited in terms of resources; Not necessarily disk space or bandwidth, but in terms of CPU and memory use. If your website ends up being as popular as you hope, you will eventually start using up more than your fair share of these resources. Cheap web hosts have to put more customers on a server which means you get a very small amount of these resources. If you start using too much your website will get shut down, meaning your customers can’t access it. Again, another area where you could potentially lose money.

This isn’t to say that cheap web hosts are bad. They certainly have their place in the market, especially for small personal websites or start-ups that might not have the capital to invest in a website that won’t get much traffic for a few years. However, if you have an established business with a website that you will use to try and increase your revenue, skimping on web hosting is a bad choice.