Website Hosting Plans - Free or Paid For

Website Hosting Plans - Free or Paid For A search on the web will reveal lots of website hosting plans from numerous companies all seeking your business at differing prices, offering slightly different packages and, of course, differing levels of support. To help you find your way through all the options you should consider the following questions.

Will Your Site Be Used For Commercial Purposes?

Firstly you should consider whether your site is critical (is it important that it is fast and always available) and it is for business or recreational/social purposes? If you are sure that this will not be the case, you should consider using a Squidoo Lens or a blog on Wordpress.com, which are free, instead of buying your own domain name and setting up your own hosting. These options do limit your flexibility but can be a quick and easy way to start.

How Important is Price?

If you have decided that the free services are not suitable the next step will be to consider the various website hosting plans that are available. Low priced deals are quite easy to find (and some advertising supported free deals) so does low price mean poor service? Bear in mind that it is actually it is easy to become a “reseller” of hosting services which means that anyone can set-up in business as website hosting providers. This means that you benefit from the infrastructure provided by the large supplier but you are dependent on the reseller for support. It is inevitable that a small reseller cannot provide the level of support outside of normal office hours that is possible for a large supplier and customers in a different time zone may find that support is only available by email. Despite this a small supplier may still be able to provide a good service but it is a risk. However, if your site is more of a hobby it may be worthwhile trying out one of the cheap services.

Issues Other Than Price The following factors should also be considered: • Can you actually pay monthly?

• Can you cancel if necessary?

• Is there a money back guarantee?

• Number of domains you can have.

• Is a domain included?

• Is Bandwidth Limited?

• Is disk space limited?

• Is speed and uptime guaranteed?

• Do you want Linux or Microsoft hosting?

• Does the Control Panel have all the functionality you need?

• How good is the support?

For more information on each of the above please Website Hosting Plans.

My View I believe that if your site is providing a service either commercial or non-commercial it is better to host it with a reputable company who are actually providing the hosting service. They are not likely to disappear, will provide all the services you need (including uptime guarantee) and will be able to support you if you have problems.