Why Pay For Web Hosting?

Web hosting is a critical aspect of any website or online application. It makes or breaks the website because with a bad hosting provider, you can potentially have more downtimes and issues. However, this doesn’t mean that you should wantonly spend a large chunk of your budget on web hosting. Instead, you need determine your requirements well, and spend just the right amount of money for the resources that you will be using.

Know what you need

There are a lot of webhosts out there that offer unlimited hosting packages. Before you choose any of these, bear in mind that there is nothing infinite in this world. Chances are that the host will be packing a lot of websites or clients in a server to try to boost their profit margins. It’s a brutal truth – it is business after all, so beware of hosts that may be overselling their services so that they can get a decent profit out of the cheap packages that they sell. You don’t want this because the server will be overcrowded and you will experience poor performance on your website as a result.

Instead of choosing something unlimited, limit yourself instead. If you know that your website will consume no more than 2GB worth of data in a month, then you do not need to subscribe to a package that offers 100GB. This is because, on general, hosting providers that charge the user $5.00/month for a 5GB package will most likely offer a better service as compared with one that offers 100GB for the same price. This is because you will be paying the host enough to have a good support team and infrastructure so that they can give you a better and more efficient service.

The same can be said about bandwidth as well. Some hosts offer lesser amounts of bandwidth, but have the server on a good Internet backbone. This means that you will be getting low latency as well as faster access speeds. These two factors alone would mean faster site loading, and will make every penny spent well worth it.
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Read reviews on your web host first

In making a long-term, important purchase of a service such as web hosting, it is crucial that you know the company that you will be dealing with. Some web hosting companies, such as Vodien, make claims to providing support 24×7, but before you believe them, try out their claims first. This means that you need to find out some background information about the company, such as the number of employees and the efficiency of their customer service, amongst many other factors, such as whether you can really get them anytime. Forums such as Web Hosting Talk can be very helpful and should be your starting point before deciding on your web host. Do ask around for recommendations from your friends as well, but note that they need to be with the web host for at least a year to have a better view of their service level.

One way that you can test out their customer support is by calling them up and actually asking them questions. Make sure that you try this at least twice, and see if you can get them as and when you want to. If they cannot answer your questions satisfactorily now, what makes you sure that they can answer your more crucial questions later?