Finding a Web Host on a Shoestring Budget

Everyone wants to get the most for their money when choosing a web host provider. These days, there are hosts that charge next to nothing and even some that provide free hosting. But those savings may not be worth it in the long run, because some of these providers are incapable of giving you the services you may need for your website.

This is not to say that free or cheap web hosting doesn't have its place. For personal or small sites, these hosts may work fine. Regardless of the rate you pay your hosting company, you need to have plans for regularly backing up your data. Larger, full service hosting companies will also have contingency plans in the event of fire, system crashes, or natural disaster.

The free web service you use to share your vacation pictures may not have such good backup plans. Therefore, you need to do your own backup. External hard drives are available for very reasonable prices, and they are extremely easy to use. Often, all you have to do is plug it into your USB port, and start copying data over. Anyone who has suffered a personal computer crash or a hosting company that has gone out of business will tell you how important regular data backups are.

So, how does a hosting service provider work? Generally speaking, web sites are housed on large, powerful computers called servers that are hooked up to the Internet with very high speed connections. When you type in a domain name in your browser program, the Internet goes to the server housing that website and downloads it onto your computer screen. This is how it works whether a provider is a discount company or a high-end company.

The data centers, or "server farms" where the hardware is housed all have physically secure buildings that are climate controlled, with protection against fire and computer viruses, and redundant power backup. They also have disaster recovery plans.

Since web hosts' hardware is all so similar, why is there such a huge range in price for hosting services? After all, you can pay from nothing, up to $1,000 a month for web hosting. Are you being suckered because you're paying more?

Not necessarily. Generally speaking the expensive host companies are expensive because of the extra services they provide, and cheap services are cheap because a company offering free or low cost hosting is renting server space at a steep discount and selling it to customers. When there is a layer of commerce between the end user and the physical server, prices drop, but customer response time slows down. Again, this may not matter much for a simple site you're setting up for fun, but it could make or break your business presence on the web, so you need to be careful of the temptation to choose the provider with the lowest prices.

There are four basic types of web hosting protocols: Dedicated Hosting, Co-location Hosting, Shared Hosting, and Reseller Hosting.

The two more expensive options are dedicated and co-location hosting.

Dedicated hosting means that an entire server is dedicated to the customer's account. Your company would not be sharing a physical server with any other company. You would also have the option to host multiple websites, modify server software, and partition your server as you see fit. Because of the greater options, dedicated hosting is fairly expensive: $200 to $500 per month. But you'll have the server power you need to handle high site traffic and high bandwidth, and you will have direct access to the administrator responsible for keeping your server or servers working smoothly.

Co-location Hosting can be even more expensive than Dedicated Hosting. This is because with Co-location Hosting, your company owns the actual server hardware, and it lives at a data center where it is tended and monitored. You'll pay $500 to $1000 per month for server administration, maintenance, and software updates, and this is on top of the cost of the server hardware, which can cost several thousand dollars. The reason some companies choose Co-location Hosting is that they have full control over the server and yet have technical experts on hand round-the-clock to keep the server working properly.

The two less expensive options for website hosting are Shared Hosting and Reseller Hosting.

Shared Hosting is practically self-explanatory. Your site will share a server with hundreds of other sites. Will your site's performance suffer as a result of using shared hosting? It could, it depends on how well the company manages it's servers. Even though servers are made to host many, many websites, if one or more of those websites becomes majorly overloaded, the entire server may slow down, and that would affect your site as well.

Theoretically, there will be technical and support staff to monitor server performance and correct any problems before they start to affect all users, but along with lower prices sometimes comes slower response time on the part of the hardware itself and the person maintaining it. However, with hundreds of companies sharing a single piece of hardware, Shared Hosting providers are able to charge very low monthly prices, generally under $20.

Reseller Hosting is a setup where the owners of the physical servers rent out bulk space on those servers at a discount of up to 50%. The person or company renting all that inexpensive server space then resells it to its own customers at a profit. If you're a customer of a reseller, then to you the reseller is your web host provider. This puts an extra layer between you and the actual hardware and its maintenance, but again, it allows very inexpensive access to web hosting.

There are instances where a company wanting to set up numerous websites purchases a reseller account at the steep discount, then "sells" all those accounts to itself. This can be much less expensive than setting up shared hosting accounts for multiple sites or subdomains.

It is not always easy to know whether you are dealing with a reseller or with a company with access to the actual hardware. One clue is cost. If hosting is offered for less than $3 a month, there is a good chance you are dealing with a reseller that may or may not have a good reputation. Sometimes it is hard to find information about a reseller, while shared, dedicated, and co-location hosts will have company information easily available over the Internet.

Reseller accounts definitely have a place in the hierarchy of options available for web hosting, but that place is almost certainly not hosting your high traffic e-commerce site that processes hundreds of credit cards and stores personal information about your customers. Many times, paying more means peace of mind and paying less in the long run. It's hard to put a price on that.

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