Despite the fact that getting a good web host is important, paying expensive fees for web hosting is not a good thing. Why pay a lot when you can get the same service at a cheaper rate? It’s a basic instinct to pick the lowest price for the value we want. However, in the process, people fall into the trap of purchasing cheap web hosting instead of cost-effective web hosting. Paying a low fee does not translate to low cost. After reading this article, you’ll know the differences between the two and have guidelines at hand to pick the right, cost-effective host for your website.
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What is Cost-effective Web Hosting?
If something is cost-effective you got it at a “good value for the amount of money paid.” If your web hosting is cost-effective, it meets your website’s need at the amount paid for it. Cost-effective hosting focuses on giving you features, security and other hosting benefits at an affordable price.
What is Cheap Web Hosting?
Cheap hosting is all about paying for hosting at the lowest amount possible. Cheap hosting companies offer amazing prices in exchange for basic functionality. They can be resellers or hosting companies whose unique selling point is the low prices they offer.
5 Ways you can Tell the Difference Between Cost-Effective and Cheap Web Hosting
Price
Cheap hosting offers the lowest price possible. They charge a low price at the expense of quality and service while cost-effective hosting gives you the best price for a specific level of service. With cheap hosting, there is a catch in the hosting package. It might be expensive increments if your site needs more space and bandwidth. It could be that the first plan is very cheap with very limited features and you have to pay triple to upgrade to a better plan. There could also be a hike in fees when you renew the plan. Cheap hosting doesn’t offer bonuses and there may be hidden fees. Sometimes, you have to pay for additional features that other hosting companies offer for free or even buy freeware. You might be told to pay an exorbitant price to add your domain name. Or the hosting service might only offer paid add-ons. By the time you’ve made all the additional payments, it becomes more expensive than cost-effective web hosting.
With cost-effective hosting, you pay slightly higher fees than the basic price of cheap hosting plans. At credible companies, your website’s requirements are fulfilled without hidden fees. There are only a few optional additional fees outside of the monthly fees. You don’t pay for freeware or additional features that have been included as part of the package. Cost-effective hosting plans’ prices are affordable, with occasional promos, discounts and bonuses. Some hosting services add a refund policy, like a 30-day money-back guarantee. That way, customers can have complete product satisfaction or get a refund if they’re no longer interested in the purchase.
Type of Hosting
Most cheap hosting companies offer shared hosting. Hundreds, sometimes thousands of sites share the space, data and resources of one server. It’s like a crowd of 300 people in a tiny cell. A crowded shared server with some websites grabbing the available resources will lead to downtime of other sites and make them unavailable. Cost-effective hosting services focus on better types of hosting such as cloud hosting, managed WordPress hosting and VPS.
Cloud hosting relies on many servers, so your site’s uptime is guaranteed. With other hosting plans such as managed WordPress and VPS, you get more resources, reliability and better maintenance of the technical aspects of your website.
Moreover, the shared hosting plans that are cost-effective offer more tools and higher bandwidth. Once a website has outgrown that plan, the site owner is notified by the hosting company so that the server won’t be overloaded.
Services
You can always differentiate between cost-effective and cheap hosting by the quality of their hosting features. Cost-effective hosting packages never reduce quality while providing the tools and services your site needs. Services, such as the email setup, are smooth. You’re provided with the latest version of PHP and MySQL. The server maintenance is top-notch. They provide extra features such as an additional dedicated IP. Here’s a good place to get such quality services.
Here are Some Services that Both Hosting Services Handle Differently:
Bandwidth and Speed
A good hosting package offers you higher bandwidth and speed, making your site connection and page load speed faster. With a cheap package, however, you never can tell. Your website will get slow and you’re not assigned enough bandwidth. The server network speed will also be slow.
Storage Space
Your site gets very limited space when you pay low fees. Sometimes the host promises unlimited storage when you’re on a shared hosting plan. This is not possible since you’re sharing resources with other websites. A cost-effective hosting service will give your site the required space to store data and files. If the site outgrows the allotted space, you’ll be notified on time so that you can upgrade your plan and have a smooth transition without your site experiencing any downtime.
Customer Management Software
With cheap web hosting, you don’t get customer management software. The user interface offered is difficult to navigate. They don’t offer easy installation for publishing software such as WordPress. Cost-effective hosting uses a good, user-friendly cPanel. You have flexibility and ease when managing your site. They also provide 1-click installation of WordPress.
Backup
Cheap hosting services let you maintain your site by yourself. They might not back up data on their server or offer services to back up your site. With a little more money, you get a hosting service that will offer a regular backup-and-restore feature on the cPanel for your site. They’ll also upgrade and backup their server.
Uptime
Websites on cheap hosting have lots of downtimes. What’s the point of having a website if visitors cannot have access to it whenever they want? Your website should be up 24/7, but when you pay a minimal fee you can’t always get that. Cost-effective hosting, on the other hand, provides a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Your website is always available to visitors. They don’t notice any lag or become dissatisfied customers.
Web Security
While SSL certificates stop hackers from stealing information that is relayed from the server to the user’s browser, it is not the only means of security your website needs. A website on an insecure server is prone to cyber-attacks. Cybercriminals and hackers use bots to attack such vulnerable sites.
With cheap hosting, you’re most likely on a shared hosting service and your website is vulnerable. Your IP address might even be blacklisted because of the nefarious activities of neighbouring sites sharing the server with you.
With cost-effective hosting, however, measures are taken against cyber attacks. Your site and the server get an auto malware scan, barriers against malicious infiltration and firewalls. The server is well protected and your website is secure.
After-sales Technical Support
Technical problems sometimes occur on websites. At those times, the customer support you get is important. How quickly the problem will be resolved will be determined by whether your hosting is cheap or cost-effective. Cheap web hosts offer support primarily by email. They might take time to reply to your mail. The assistance they give won’t be as detailed as assistance given in cost-effective hosting, and they might fix the problem only for the short term. This will affect user experience and can lead to loss of sales and visitors.
Cost-effective hosts offer several kinds of support. You can contact them by phone, live-chat or email. They have a team that is willing to look into the problem your site has encountered immediately and solve it. The customer support is reliable and available 24/7.
Cost-effective hosting is better than cheap hosting and provides more value. Always choose your hosting service wisely.
