Affordable Web Hosting
Web Hosting is getting cheaper these days. Long gone are the days you’d have to pay $20 per month for a decent web host. In fact, for most websites, all you need is a basic web hosting account. And if you’re paying more than $10 per month, I’d say you’re getting robbed.
And believe me, I have re-created numerous sites for clients who were paying upwards to $100 per month for their business website by some major companies out to simply take advantage of people. One company I was hired to redo their website was paying $1200 per year for a 5 page website, got no traffic and couldn’t be found in the search engines. They received no phone calls, no emails in over a year.
So they hired me. I immediately switched them over to Optimal Web Hosting to a basic account ($3.95) and re-did their site. They can now be found in the search engines and are actually getting traffic now. $1200 per year for a 5 page site should be criminal.
Optimal Web Hosting, for example, starts their basic web hosting at only $3.95 per month. This includes some great perks, like 250 Gig of bandwidth. That’s alot of bandwidth. It would be pretty hard to use that much in a month, but I am going to try with this site.
So some things to consider when choosing a web host…
Bandwidth - How much data transfer each month, the more the better
Php / mysql - Offers MySQL Databases and PHP, a programming language where you can eaily install tons of scripts (like forums, online chat, etc).
Email accounts - Does it include email accounts like yourname@yourwebsite.com?
Disk space - How much storage you have, do you have enough to store pictures and videos, etc?
Advertising banners - Does you web host put ads on your site? Most, if not all, FREE ones put ads on your site.
Techincal Support - Does your web host offer 24 hour telephone tech support?
Uptime Guarantee - Is your site actually going to be up and running when you visit it?
There are numerous things to consider when picking a web hosting company. We use Optimal Web Hosting for a number of our sites, including this one and it works great for us. It offers 24 hour tech support, 99.9% uptime guarantee, huge data storage and bandwidth capabilites, unique IP addresses for each site, no advertising banners, tons of email accounts and overall we’ve been quite happy with it and keep returning for more sites.
Now, if you’re technically inclined then you can use your computer to host your own web site, but you’d have to leave your computer on 24 hours and you’d have to have a heck of hi speed connection to pull it off. I have a number of friends who host at home and most of their sites are slow and you can tell. But if you don’t have lots of graphics and video then you could get away with it.
Anyway, things to consider when choosing a web hosting company…