Type the word “hosting” into Google or any other search engine and it won’t be long before you find all sorts of special offers from web hosting price comparison websites. You will then undoubtedly be pleasantly surprised to find out that web hosting has become relatively inexpensive, averaging at less than $5.00 per month (£3.14), depending on the terms of your contract.
Thinking Long Term
The most important thing to remember when you’re shopping around is to think long term. How long do you intend to host your website for? And even more importantly, what your website will look like in 2 to 10 years? These are the questions you really need to ask yourself before choosing a web host.
Indeed, although most web hosting companies will happily keep hosting your site at the same monthly price stated in your initial contract, some will change the amount they charge you as soon as your initial contract period has elapsed, depending on how popular your website is and how much bandwidth you and your visitors are using up.
Competitive Prices
The growing number of web hosting companies has made prices in the field become really competitive and services more appealing than ever. This is often good news for professional website builders, but it can mean trouble for beginners. The key is not to skip past the fine print. Make sure you understand the terms of your contract, from duration of the contract to disk space and email storage. Going over your limits may result in a cessation of services or in some cases, an additional fee to your monthly charge.
Shopping for Bonuses
Before launching into any of that however, you should start off by considering what it is you need and shopping around based on your specific requirements. Remember that some web hosting companies do not show up in price comparison websites and in only a few extra clicks, you might find them to be cheaper and better suited to the kind of deal you are looking for.
You’ll also soon discover that most deals come with a wide range of bonus features, which can definitely help your decision-making process. Most offers will come in the form of discounted prices for an initial period, but they can also come in the form of Facebook AdCredits, 24/7 technical support or unlimited use of your host’s website builder.
For just £1.30 you could get an “economy” deal from a well-known web hosting provider for any duration from three to 36 months. For that price, you will get 10 GB of disk space, up to a hundred email addresses and up to 100 MB of email storage. On top of these, you can get a multitude of other features such as unlimited external domains, 25 sub-domains, blog compatibility, 24/7 phone and email support, $50 worth of Facebook Ad Credits (which you might consider using to start driving traffic to your new website) and much more.
More Money, More Options
The main difference you will notice between this deal and a more expensive one is that for just a few pounds more, you should get all of the advantages listed above (and more) but exponentially bigger. So for instance a £4.49 per month contract with a minimum duration of just 1 month will allow you up to 150 GB of disk space, 500 email addresses and up to 500 MB of email storage. You’ll also be entitled to use that disk space allowance to host up to 400 sub-domains and an unlimited number of other websites (as opposed to the single domain in the previous deal).
To work out the average competitive price of web hosting, we could use the top 10 offers from a variety of price comparison websites. On the date this article was written (12th of April 2012), that average price was just under £3.14. Of course this average price in no way reflects what kind of value for money you would get as a website owner because as we have established, a good deal is more about the bonus features in your contract than the basic specifications you get for your monthly fee.
Photo by Craig A Rodway
Whatever your website hosting needs if you follow this advice you are sure to find a reliable hosting deal to suit your needs.
