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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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