Choosing a Paid Web Hosting Service
Greetings from Siddharth Rao’s Blog and a “Happy Thanksgiving” to all US based readers!
Following up on my previous post about free web hosting services, in this post - I’ll talk about paid (cheap) web hosting services. Free web hosting is always the first choice for most beginners; however there are many limitations that would make one think about switching to a shared hosting service.
A shared hosting service requires you to pay a small monthly fee (as low as $3/month) – and you get unlimited space / huge bandwidth for web hosting. This type of web hosting is usually provided from a shared server, meaning that one hosting server shares several accounts. That is why the company can afford providing this service for such a low monthly fee.
Since it is a paid hosting plan, your site would not have any advertisements from the hosting service provider. Also, there are a range of added benefits that you get which includes databases, dozens of open-source ready-to-install server-side applications, analytics services, a C-panel (or a graphical interface to manage your hosting account), one (or more) FTP accounts, and more. You have complete control of how and what you want to put up on your web site(s).
Another benefit of opting for a paid hosting service is that you can have multiple web sites hosted off the same hosting account. You can have many sub-domains configured for your web site(s) as well. You can also install custom/3rd party applications or content management systems for your web site(s) and manage/update them efficiently and easily.
With that said – how do you go about choosing a shared web hosting service? Well, basically you have to ask yourself – how much traffic and bandwidth usage is my web site going to get? Secondly, you should decide if you are going to require many databases for your web sites. Depending on these two factors, you will have to choose around services and plans for paid hosting.
Choosing a shared web hosting provider can be an arduous task. With so many companies out there and hundreds of web sites talking about comparisons, reviews and biased rankings for the top web hosts, it is indeed a hard decision to make. In my experience, I’ve worked with five major web hosting companies so far and I’ve found three of them to have attendant problems which are never surfaced till you happen to go through it, or fall victim to it.
One of the biggest problems I’ve found with shared web hosting providers is support during downtime. Meaning that if their hosting server has a problem, all shared hosting accounts that are set up on that server will be unavailable to anyone. At such a time, I’ve experienced wait times of over two hours on the phone when I wanted to reach out to them for support. Although we can’t complain much at the price we pay for a cheap shared hosting, it is always a testing time for a web hosting company when it comes to customer service on shared hosting servers.
To round up my experiences and findings so far, I’ve found two web hosting companies that are by far the best – when it comes to shared hosting services as well as support. They are “GoDaddy” and “BlueHost”.
The best part of GoDaddy is that they give you the option to pay monthly – for your shared hosting account. Almost all other hosting providers require you to pay upfront for at least 6 months or a 12-month plan. With GoDaddy, you can have the flexibility to pay each month and not make a bigger investment. However, if you choose to pick up a 6-month/yearly plan – you get discounts on the total amount you pay towards the hosting service. I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to start out and has a low budget. As a matter of fact – this web site is hosted on GoDaddy as well : - )
Talking about BlueHost, they do not have a monthly paying hosting option. You have to sign up for a minimum of 12-months of hosting. However, they offer a lot of value and options with your hosting account and for the price you pay, it is by far the best bargain one can get. They are also renowned for their outstanding customer support and consistent up time of servers, even for shared hosting accounts. So, in terms of long-term reliability, BlueHost would stand out of the competition. I have some other (bigger) sites hosted off BlueHost and I’ve loved their service so far.
Before I conclude this post, here are a few coupons for additional savings – should you plan to buy a hosting account (or just a domain) from either GoDaddy or BlueHost:
GoDaddy Coupon Codes:
BlueHost Coupon Codes:
- Get 20% OFF Any Hosting Plan (coupon applies at checkout)
Good luck with all your web-endeavors !! : - )
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