Thursday, September 4, 2008

Cheap webhosting is No Bargain

by: Jim Edwards © Jim Edwards - All Rights reserved
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Ever heard the saying “Penny-wise and Dollar-foolish”?
Well bargain priced website hosting may just represent the perfect example of watching a jar full of pennies while bucket loads of dollars fly out the window!
When I launched my first website way back in the “dark ages” of 1997 I paid almost $150 a month in hosting and data transfer charges. My web host watched how many files I uploaded like a hawk and always seemed to send their hefty invoices earlier with each passing month. I’m obviously not the only one who felt that way, because suddenly a whole industry of “bargain” web hosts sprang up all over the web. On the surface they all sound great, especially when you think you can go from $150 a month down to $4.95 a month!

Five bucks a month sounds great, until you realize the amount of data transfer (number of page views) and bandwidth (the amount of data transfer your host allows in a 24 hour period) you get for that low price severely limits your ability to do business. This realization - along with a panic attack and a quick lesson in how data transfer and bandwidth get calculated - usually comes at the least convenient time.

When you exceed your limits, a bargain host usually just shuts you down with no warning.

Most webmasters realize they’ve made a mistake by choosing a bargain host when their site suddenly gets shut down in the middle of a big promotion because of a traffic spike. Believe me, everything just stops! Here are a few bargain hosts that provide good service, but you really need to really check the fine print for how much bandwidth they allow.
www.FeaturePrice.com
For $24.95 a month you get to host up to six independent websites with a single account. You get unlimited data storage, unlimited email and a variety of other higher end services, but their bandwidth policy seems hard to understand.

www.HostSave.com

Host Save is another low price hosting company that delivers a wide range of services for only $6.95 per month. They recently raised their allowable data transfer, but their policy on how much bandwidth you can use at a given time seems non-existent.

www.DotEasy.com

For $25 DotEasy offers a domain name purchase along with one year’s hosting. Sounds incredible until you read the fine print to discover they limit you to 1 Gigabyte of data transfer a month. Not much data once you start getting reasonable site traffic.
The moral here? Either be prepared to have your business shut down mid-stream if you get successful, or pay a few extra bucks each month to ensure you have enough bandwidth and data transfer. At a minimum, specifically ask and read the fine print about the host’s bandwidth and data transfer policies before it’s too late! About the author:Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use fr^e articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate links...

Simple "Traffic Machine" brings Thousands of NEW visitors to your website for weeks, even months... without spending a dime on advertising! ==> http://www.WebBizInsider.com/Home.asp?RID=120111

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