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Any business on a budget will want and need to keep its expenses down. One of the ways to do this is to find the most affordable website hosting plan possible. Unfortunately, this is not always easy.
Sure, there are plenty of hosting providers who claim to offer inexpensive web hosting, but many of them have poor quality service and hidden fees.
A web hosting plan that appears to be affordable can turn into an expensive nightmare if you fail to do your homework. This is why you should be careful in researching and look at a number of companies before making your final decision.
Comparing Costs
Although it's not the only thing you should look at, the first thing you'll want to examine are the fees charged by the companies under consideration. Fees you should look at include setup fees, maintenance fees, whether they be monthly or yearly, and any other expenses.
One thing to keep in mind is that some web hosts include setup at no extra charge. Free or discounted features like this are not uncommon in the competitive web hosting arena, and they can certainly “sweeten the deal” for you.
Features
Of course, cost is not the only thing you should examine when comparing web hosting plans from different providers. Other factors include the amount of storage space you get at each price point, which programming language each web host supports, and the quality of the customer provided. Some hosting companies will offer these features in their basic, most affordable plan, but not all of them will.
Don't overlook the other services that might be provided by competing web hosting companies. These can include free domain name registration and various web building tools. Some web hosting providers include such niceties even with the most affordable plans, something that could tip your decision in their favor.
Reliability
Even after you have found a few contenders that offer the features you need to create your website, there are still other things to take into consideration before signing on the dotted line. The most important of these is reliability.
The most affordable web hosting plans may not always be the most reliable. Yet, whatever your budget, you need your website to be accessible 24/7, so reliability is essential. Therefore, before choosing a web host plan you should find out about each provider's downtime.
Final Considerations
Even if you are on a budget, you still want to make sure that a provider offers you the support you need when you need it. You should ask about the available technical support options, inquire into the provider's response time and check into the availability of customer support representatives. Web hosting can sometimes be a technical affair, and you want to make sure that you can get answers to your questions even if you're not an expert.
Although there are lots of options to consider, and it can be a little overwhelming, you can find support and guidance by checking out some the reviews of the available web hosts that you're considering. As long as you make sure you look at reviews from sources that are unbiased, you will find that many other users have done much of the research for you and can help to sort the wheat from the chaff in this competitive arena.
Tim Arends is a Mac and Apple user and Internet maven who offers freelance writing services on web hosting, social media and the Internet to Internet marketers.