When you start searching for a web hosting company, the first thing you are always going to look at is the price. You can’t help it. As over-savvy global consumers, we always jump to the bottom line with everything we buy, and it’s no different when you are shopping around for a cheap web hosting company. Why not? If someone sells a web hosting package for $6.95 a month, there’s got to be someone who has the same features for less money. This is true to a certain extent, but with lower prices, web hosting companies have become savvy too, and while the features offered by many companies look the same, there are subtle differences that begin appearing once the price starts dropping.
Knowing that as consumers we are so enthralled by the low monthly price that we don’t look at the fine print, some budget web hosting companies have been playing a bit of a shell game with the features they offer. So, if you go shopping for a web hosting company and only compare them by the price, you are going to be disappointed when you figure out that you got taken advantage of because the features you assumed were included don’t work the way you thought they would. You’ll have to use all of the restraint you can muster and stop looking at the monthly hosting fees, because the way to compare hosting companies is to look at the companies themselves.
Comparing cheap web hosting companies is like comparing used cars. Free cup holders and a new paint job don’t really matter if the engine doesn’t run right. But we tend to get carried away by the fact that you can get a newer looking convertible with free seat covers for less money, even though it doesn’t have a transmission. We’ll still take that over the more reliable car and work out the rest later, because in our mind we are already driving with the top down at the beach. It’s the same way with hosting companies. You see the words ‘free’ and ‘FrontPage’ and ‘unlimited’ and the rest doesn’t matter because whatever it is that’s missing, you’ll work around it. You just have to figure out how to use the Flash that you think is included for free to grab people’s attention when they view your site. Maybe you are different, but it’s hard for most people not to get excited when they see the really neat features that you can get for so little per month, especially if they have a friend who doesn’t understand web hosting either to egg them on. So it’s very easy for many people to buy the proverbial convertible with no transmission if they don’t know what to look for in an affordable web hosting company.
So, if you aren’t looking at price, and you aren’t looking at extra features, how do you compare web hosting companies? The answer really depends on what you need to accomplish with your web site. If you are just starting out, don’t burden yourself with trying to learn a lot of technology; just stick with the basics. Many people go to college to learn web development, so even with wizards and tutorials you aren’t going to learn how use all of the computer languages and scripts overnight. However, the first things that you can compare are the hosting environments of different companies. A hosting environment is basically the server, the operating system, and the software that goes with it. The two operating systems that you will probably come across the most when it comes to low cost web hosting are Linux and Windows. Mot cheap web hosting companies use a Linux operating system because Linux is General License Software. This makes it and its updates virtually free, so the savings is passed on to you in the form of cheap web hosting. As well, Linux is probably the most reliable and secure operating system to use. However, while the Linux software and updates are free, the actual time it takes to update and configure a Linux operating system is not.
It takes a considerable amount of money to pay the IT techs to keep the operating system updated as new technology and software are introduced. So, in order to understand what you are really getting, you are going to have to go through each bit of free software that a low cost web hosting company offers and find out what version it is. For example, a company may list free PHP on their features, but you have to find out if it is PHP 4 or 5 or whatever the latest version is, because this is where web hosting companies get sneaky. They save money by not updating their operating system, which means that the latest versions of software can’t be used on it. If you are a newbie, all you know is that you got the most features for the least amount of money! Who cares if everything you have to develop your site is outdated; you have it all! No, unfortunately what you really have is the proverbial convertible without a transmission.
Not updating the operating system is the sneaky way that budget web hosting companies have of ripping you off. They figure that you don’t know what PHP is anyway and that you’ll never use it, so why not offer you and outdated operating system for $3.95 a month, and everybody is blissfully unaware. For many people that works, but if you are serious about web hosting, you need to take the time to figure out the operating system of each company and compare them that way. You can start by going though each piece of software and figure out what versions it is. If everything that the company has is old, then it isn’t worth it just to save two dollars a month. Go with the web hosting company that has a decently updated Linux operating system and pay the extra money. It’s worth it.
Please note: A hosting package with a Windows operating system is going to be more expensive because the software is all licensed. However, if you are going to use Microsoft products like FrontPage it is better to go with a Windows hosting environment, which will use the Windows Internet Information Server. However, it still holds true that your hosting company needs to have the latest versions of all Microsoft products installed in order for you to take full advantage of what Microsoft offers.
Of course, an operating system isn’t worth much if your web hosting company doesn’t have updated servers, so the next things to compare are the datacenters. If you don’t know, a datacenter is where a hosting company stores all of its computers. Obviously, you want to go with the web hosting company that has the latest computer equipment, and the best storage facility, but comparing datacenters is tricky, because you can’t ever physically go see them. This means that you have to take someone’s word that everything about their data center is true.
There are two schools of thought with datacenters. The first is that if a company owns their own data center, and has in-house customer service, they can tell you exactly what the problem is if the servers go down. This sounds great in theory, but this means that if a hosting company owns their own data center, they also have the expense of maintaining it. What you need to look for here is whether the hosting company that has its own data center is also owned by a larger company. If a hosting company is owned by a larger corporation and the larger corporation buys a datacenter for the hosting company, this means that the data center is an investment and the corporation will pay to maintain it. If a hosting company is by itself and relies on monthly fees to maintain its data center, you can bet that the data center will eventually suffer. Customer fees of $4.95 a month from subscribers simply aren’t enough to maintain and update equipment. So if you go with an affordable web hosting company that is also an independent company, it is better that they lease their servers from a reputable data center. Go to the datacenter’s web site, and you should be able to get enough information from there so that you can compare it with what other companies are offering in the way of equipment.
The next thing to compare is a little easier, which is the disk space and bandwidth. The standard these days seems to be 1,500 GB of disk space and 15,000 GB of bandwidth per month. If someone offers ‘unlimited’ disk space and bandwidth, don’t let that confuse you. Unlimited still usually means 1,500 GB of disk space and 15,000 GB of bandwidth, where ‘unlimited’ is just a marketing term. This term came about when web hosting companies figured that this amount of space would never be exceeded by the average user, hence the term unlimited. So if a budget web hosting company isn’t offering this amount of space these days, you might as well keep looking. Unless they have some really great software, there isn’t a reason to settle for less.
Going through a cheap hosting company’s range of assets is the best way to compare it to other web hosting companies. When you do this you will begin to understand how one company can afford to charge a dollar a month less than another one and realize that it isn’t worth fooling around with if you can’t get your website working in the 21st century. Remember that affordable web hosting companies change features like used car lots change seat covers for cup holders; you have to remember the real bottom line is what’s under the hood. So don’t just kick the tires and walk away with a free air freshener – you have to check out the engine of a car to see what you are really getting.
