Cheap Web Hosting is No Bargain

Ever heard the saying "Penny-wise and Dollar-foolish"?

Well bargain priced website hosting may just represent theperfect example of watching a jar full of pennies whilebucket 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 datatransfer charges.

My web host watched how many files I uploaded like a hawkand always seemed to send their hefty invoices earlier witheach passing month.

I'm obviously not the only one who felt that way, becausesuddenly a whole industry of "bargain" web hosts sprang upall over the web.

On the surface they all sound great, especially when youthink you can go from $150 a month down to $4.95 a month!

Five bucks a month sounds great, until you realize theamount of data transfer (number of page views) and bandwidth(the amount of data transfer your host allows in a 24 hourperiod) you get for that low price severely limits yourability to do business.

This realization - along with a panic attack and a quicklesson in how data transfer and bandwidth get calculated -usually comes at the least convenient time.

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

Most webmasters realize they've made a mistake by choosing abargain host when their site suddenly gets shut down in themiddle of a big promotion because of a traffic spike.Believe me, everything just stops!

Here are a few bargain hosts that provide good service, butyou really need to really check the fine print for how muchbandwidth they allow.

www.FeaturePrice.com

For $24.95 a month you get to host up to six independentwebsites with a single account. You get unlimited datastorage, unlimited email and a variety of other higher endservices, but their bandwidth policy seems hard tounderstand.

www.HostSave.com

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

www.DotEasy.com

For $25 DotEasy offers a domain name purchase along with oneyear's hosting. Sounds incredible until you read the fineprint to discover they limit you to 1 Gigabyte of datatransfer a month. Not much data once you start gettingreasonable site traffic.

The moral here? Either be prepared to have your businessshut down mid-stream if you get successful, or pay a fewextra bucks each month to ensure you have enough bandwidthand data transfer.

At a minimum, specifically ask and read the fine print aboutthe host's bandwidth and data transfer policies before it'stoo late!

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