Buy Web Hosting - 3 Common Mistakes People Make When Buying Web Hosting, But Which You Should Avoid?

Are you choosing a web hosting service and going to buy one now? Make sure you don't commit these 3 common mistakes like many others did, or it'll be a living hell to you.

Cheap is Good?

Most people go for price as their primary decision factor. This particularly holds true for newbies who're just getting started and they don't know what actually to look for.

Here's a word of caution: if you pick by price, you can die by price. Period.

Cheap web hosting may sound like a great deal... but you'll lose more money if your site gets shut down without warning.

Generally, low price means low reliability. A rough guide would be if it costs you $1 - $4 per month, then you need to be careful of this web host. Bear in mind, good things come at a price.

But good news for you is, due to fierce competition in the web hosting industry, some very reputable and reliable web hosts are willing to step down their prices yet continue to offer an unmatched hosting service that leaves their competitors in the dust.

That means, you don't have to pay more for a quality service. Getting a reliable web hosting at an affordable rate is feasible now. But again, not too cheap as in $1 - $4 per month that could probably cause a quality compromise.

So, how to identify a reliable service? Read on.

Free Vs Paid Hosting

Why do you want to build a website? For fun? For money?

If it's for fun and you don't want to spend a red cent, I'd suggest you to go for free web hosting. Just that you have to bear with the ugly URL which carries your username after the domain name of the free web hosting company. For example, freehostabc.com/~yourusername. Oh, not forgetting that all your web pages will be tacked with annoying ads by the free host to get some compensation out of your free hosting.

But if you want to make money out of your website, then you must invest in both domain name and web hosting.

But take note, do NOT upgrade to paid hosting from your free hosting with the same company. Why?

Very simple. 99% of free web hosts provide shared hosting only. That means, you'll be sharing resources with other free users if you were to upgrade and become a paid user.

Actually, shared hosting is not scary. The thing that frightens people is that you're sharing everything with thousand other free users. It only takes a few free users to abuse the resources and that's it for your website.

The effect can be devastating especially to the loading speed of your website. That alone is powerful enough to kill your business.

And usually free websites outnumber paid websites by 10 - 50 times (or even much more). That's why in such a shared environment, they can't afford to allocate very powerful resources for the paid users for their server resources are pretty much limited, although paid users are getting much more than the free users.

Whereas for those 100% paid web host, there's not a single free soul in their server, therefore, their paid users in general are getting very solid resources and overall more reliable hosting in this kind of hosting environment. And to keep their servers performing optimally, good paid web hosts will only carry 50 - 150 paid users in a high-performance shared server. (You can opt for a dedicated server if you want the server to belong 100% to you only, but of course, you pay more)

For a typical free hosting service, you can expect to have up to 1000 users (mixture of free and paid users) squeezing in a server. Or they'll host 100 - 200 users, but in a dirt cheap low-performance server. That's why they can afford to offer free hosting.

And because of that, you can barely find quality in such free hosting service.

On top of that, it appears even more expensive with their upgrading package compared to web hosts that serve paid users only.

Ask ALL successful marketing gurus, none of them will recommend you web hosts that offer free hosting. Guaranteed!

In short, web host that allows for free hosting are less reliable. But again, if you don't want to spend a penny to host your site, then free web hosting is your best option.

Pay Monthly or Yearly?

No matter how rock solid a review for a web hosting company is, bear this in mind, don't barge straight into a yearly plan. Pretty risky.

Yes, yearly hosting plan will save you some money up front. But if you don't test drive the service via monthly hosting first, you can easily get stuck with the web host that gives you hell for the rest of the remaining period before the one year contract ends.

Although monthly hosting costs you a few bucks more, it's best to test drive for two months before you commit yearly, so that you can quickly switch a web host without paying too dearly. The best review is your personal experience.

Don't rely solely on other reviews (even though they're genuine) to make your decision. Be rational. Even if it's a Ferrari, it's still wise to test drive before you buy.

Tip: Most free web hosts (and some paid web hosts) allow for yearly paid hosting only. That shows how lack of confidence they are. A good and reliable web host will offer both monthly and yearly options for you to choose from, coupled with money back guarantee. Usually the money back guarantee is 30 days. But very few good ones dare to offer 45 days. The longer the guarantee, the stronger is their confidence in their service and quality.

Besides avoiding the 3 common mistakes above, you must also learn about the 3 crucial factors, which form the critical backbones of reliable web hosting that are then the real secret behind the most profitable online business. You want more sales, your web host MUST carry that 3 factors!

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