How Do I Select An Affordable Hosting Plan?
Posted in Hosting, Starting Out by DB
Stare too long at a comparison chart for a budget website hosting plan from a few of the million or so hosting companies out there and pretty soon you might just start to despair. Every company out there seem to be advertising the same features, unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth ( data transfer ) and to top it all even the freebies start to sound alike. While website hosting is a competitive business, it can get more than a little confusing for a newbie trying to find an affordable plan to get started.
What can you do different? Instead of looking at the usual features and promises take the unconventional route and start comparing Hosting providers by the amount of support and service they offer. This is what is really important anyway for a newbie, not the gazillion bytes they’re giving in storage. Chances are, you’ll never come close to needing that much space anyway, unless you have a huge collection of rich media files and non-stop and or viral traffic.
Start by weeding out all of the companies that don’t offer round the clock support. This should give you a much more watered down list of hosting companies. Look at who is left standing. Narrow it even further by weeding out the companies that only offer email support. You should now be able to make a much more informed decision at this point.
The usual mistake is to make a decision based on the price when buying a website hosting plan. If price is really such an over riding factor then at the very least make sure you read through the company’s TOS carefully and always sign up for a monthly plan. A monthly plan though slightly more expensive will give the option of cutting your loses if the going starts to get tough. Do be aware that many budget hosts have all sorts of nasty little fees that they in all probability will spring on you and what started out as a cheap plan can and will turn into an expensive one really really fast.
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