Budget Web Hosting

Choosing web host for your budget web hosting is - neither free, nor expensive - puts you in a situation in which smart shopping skills can really pay off. Keep reading to learn some things to check as you make your decision.

Commitment

Some web hosts require quite a long contract and others don't. At the same time, you may pay less if you pay for a stretch of time all at once. One approach you can take is start with the shortest period as a test to make sure both that the budget web host is everything claimed and to make sure that you have all the services and support that you need, and then switch off to a longer commitment and let the savings kick –in.

Advertising

Usually, moving from free web hosting to paid web hosting gets you out of the zone of having to live with pop-ups and banner ads on your site, but it's worth checking to make sure. Somebody else's advertisements really changes the character of your site.

Web Hosting Cost

For less than $10/month, you may be offered storage space measured in megabytes (MB) or gigabytes (GB). That's a huge difference. A comparable difference can be see in bandwidth for transfer. You may also find yourself with 10 email addresses or 5,000. You may or may not have access to a database, a CGI-bin, SSL, FTP, and languages such as PHP. All this is important to discover inasmuch as it impacts what you wish to do on the World Wide Web.

Room to Grow

First, be sure that there are upgrades available and that they grow in a direction that serves your needs. It's not unimaginable that you might need more storage space, but how likely is it that you'll need another 10,000 email addresses? That depends entirely on what you're doing with your site. Budget web hosting services often have several levels of service, typically three, so even if you're not ready to do it just yet, check out where the roads lead.

If your use might grow a lot, you might also want to check on the potential for moving from a shared server to a dedicated server and from a starter or basic plan to a professional or premium plan with eCommerce offerings.

Also, if you think you might be doing any amount of substantial development, find out what happens if you:

• have overage in the area of storage or bandwidth
• wish to expand or upgrade your service in the midst of a pre-paid period
• want to move to another service for some reason

Reliability

At budget prices, you're going to be getting shared web hosting, and in shared web hosting, how your neighbors on the server behave can affect your web experience. First of all, you want to be sure that the budget web host can handle peak-time web traffic. Second, you don't want to be sharing an IP with folks who do things (with SPAM, content, or in other ways) that get them blocked, because you may be forced to go along for the ride. Check for user ratings, reviews, awards, and other indications that you'll be able to do what you need to do with your account when you need to do it and without interference.

Support

Support in the case of budget web hosting may mean an opportunity to email and be answered within 1 business day, live chat, or a real person you can speak to on the telephone. If your website is personal and laid back, your needs may be different than those of someone who's aspiring to build a web business, or maybe not. Whatever your situation, check the support offerings to be sure that you'll get the care you need for your purposes.