Cheapest Web Hosting - A true story

Title: Cheapest Web Hosting - A true story
Author: Godfrey Heron
Email: info@irieisle-online.com
Word Count:550
Copyright: © 2006 by Godfrey Heron
Web Address: www.irieisle-online.com

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We all want something for nothing, or at least close to nothing, and quite naturally we extend that "philosophy" from our personal lives to our businesses. This may be borne out of a real lack of resources or being cost conscious or just being plain scroogelike with our funds. Whatever the reason, you should at least be aware of the potential problems you may encounter down the line when looking for the cheapest web hosting solution. One of my favorite quotes borne out of experience is : "low prices often come with a high cost".

One of the key responsibilities of a web host is to ensure that the websites hosted are actually viewable on the Internet without interruption. Now, there is a direct relation between reliability and cost, in that, the more hosting costs the more reliable the host will be, other things being equal. Why? That's because redundant hosting servers and network connections are not cheap. In addition, it is an open secret that web hosts over-sell their servers, with the expectation that you will not actually use the multiple gigabytes disk space offered to you for $1.00.

This is not necessarily a bad thing and is a practice also carried out in other industries, such as the Aviation industry. However, the cheapest web hosting companies will attempt to stuff as many accounts unto a server as possible, at the expense of greater server loads and reduced server reliability.

Do not be impressed by "awards" trumpeted by some hosting companies with the cheaper hosting plans.These days anyone can create an award. Always seek out hosting references/testimonials as these are more reliable. Bear in mind that with the massive consolidation of the hosting market, a takeover of a particular company might lead to change, but not necessarily for the better, of a hosting providers' customer service.

Economies of scale and vertical integration of datacenters, network peering agreements etc, enable the larger hosting companies to offer very reasonably priced web hosting plans, but the cheapest web hosting plans are invariably run from a DSL /T1 cable connection in someone's basement, where the expenditure on security costs (both software security updates and physical security) and uptime costs, such as UPS/back up generator costs, are at a bare minimum. You should also be careful of those cheap $1.00/mth plans that seem so perfect, but on close inspection require a $25 setup fee and 6 months or a year payable in advance.

Bottom line, if you are hosting a personal site where reliability is not really an issue then by all means check out those cheap $1.00/mth hosting plans. A hosting company's services may be compared to a triangle, with the sides labeled as follows:

You will be able to get any two sides of the triangle , but receiving all three sides of the customer service triangle remains an illusion of perfection. If you get a host that is reliable and fast, it will not be cheap and if you have a hosting service that is cheap and reliable it won't be fast. In this imperfect world the cheapest web hosting providers must compromise on some area of their service. You should thoroughly checkout the cheap web hosting providers before you commit yourself to long term contracts.

Cheapest Web Hosting - A true story

Godfrey Heron is the Website Manager of the Irieisle Multiple Domain Reseller Hosting company. Signup for your free trial, and host multiple web sites on one account.