Choosing the right low cost web hosting

For those who've just got into creating websites, choosing the right hosting provider amongst the huge variety of choices of low cost web hosting can be one of the most daunting parts of the entire journey. This article is aimed at informing buyers of what to look for when choosing a cheap hosting server.

The cheapest website hosting deals that you could come across are those that are in fact, free. Free hosting has the obvious benefit of costing you nothing. However, free hosts often won't allow you the option of having your own domain name (a critical part of getting your site look professional), very little support and often fill your page up with ads that you will likely receive no income from. These free hosts also tend to be lacking in some of the more useful and extensive software, like cPanel, which can make running and maintaining your websites a lot easier. Security on these free hosts is often minimal as well, leaving your site vulnerable to hackers and spam bots.

The most common hosting services offered is what we refer to as "shared hosting". If you buy a shared hosting service, your website will be hosted on the same web server that is used to host many other websites. This means that your website will be sharing system resources such as bandwidth, CPU and memory usage with other websites being hosted on that particular server. Hosting service such as this is naturally a low cost web hosting solution because the hosting provider would host thousands of websites on the same machine. Therefore, the cost to the hosting provider is the same no matter how many websites they're hosting. Low quality hosting providers might use a cheap hosting server, as in a low quality server. Some even on their own desktop computers! The problem with this is that when your website is being loaded up for display at the same time as other websites that are being hosted on the same server, those resources may become over-loaded and your website could take very long to load, or might not even load at all. Most visitors won't return to such websites. They might even close out the page before it is completely loaded because it's taking them too long to get to what they want. Some of these cheap hosting services also put strong limitations on data storage and bandwidth usage.

Some website hosting deals for shared hosting offer higher quality services. They have multiple servers and limit the number of websites each account holder could host on their server. They also make use of cutting-edge servers with the most recent hardware, so page loading performance remains intact even during times of heavy traffic to several sites. Since the hosting is still shared this is still generally considered as a low cost web hosting solution, but with noticeably better performance compared to a cheap hosting server. Some of the obstacles you might face here are limited storage space, traffic usage/bandwidth limitations and also software limitations.

When buying a shared hosting package, there are several things you should keep an eye out for in the package guarantees. You should try to find a service that offers unlimited (or at least ample) data storage, as well as offering unlimited bandwidth and traffic usage. This way, you won't have to worry about running out of space to populate your web contents or worried about your site running low on the allotted bandwidth quota, resulting in your web pages not loading at all. You should also look for a well-stocked cPanel or other software managers which will allow you the most freedoms when managing your site. Other considerations include the number of domains they'll allow you to host (if you're planning on hosting more than one domain) as well as the technical supports they offer.

Higher-end packages are also available for those who are more serious about web development. These plans include Virtual Private Servers (VPS) or Dedicated Servers. The trouble with these can be that they usually require some expertise in higher end server management in order to get things to run smoothly. Such services can also be pretty costly depending on the company you're using and the plan that you're selecting. These hosting solutions should only be considered by professionals who are planning to host several high-traffic websites and they're knowledgeable enough to know their way around SSH or other methods to manage these servers.

So, if you're new to web building or are just looking for a new hosting provider, make sure that you know what you're getting yourself into prior to hitting that "Buy" button. Some website hosting deals really are too good to be true, so be sure to check the host's official website and scrutinize the features they offer, paying specific attention to how quickly their official website is loading. Also, don't forget to perform your due diligence on the hosting company's history, reputation and the experiences of their existing clients that have already been using their services before making a decision.

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