What Makes a Good Inexpensive Web Hosting Provider?

Type in a keyword search for inexpensive web hosting provider and you will be inundated with hundreds of thousands of results. There are hundreds if not thousands of providers out there claiming to offer cheap, low cost service. Unfortunately, not all Internet web hosting service providers are created equally. Some might offer low cost but couple it with low quality of service.

If you are looking for a good web hosting service provider and beyond that an inexpensive web hosting provider there are several things you should be looking for.

Low cost. This one goes without saying. After all, this is sort of what defines an cheap web hosting provider. $50 a month isn't exactly inexpensive. Generally speaking an inexpensive web hosting provider should have a price tag of about $10 a month or less. At the very most, they should be $20 a month, unless you are looking for a sophisticated ecommerce business host. You will also want to ensure that the price you are being told is the proper price. Make sure there aren't any hidden charges waiting to reach into your wallet that you didn't know you would have to pay. Many providers, for example, have set-up fees, or they might have other fees that pop-up that are not included in their "low" base price.

Lots of storage space. A good web hosting service provider should give you plenty of room to store the files that make up your web site. You might find some cheap providers offering as little as 5 Mb. However, there are plenty of providers out there that offer an entire GB of space; many offer quite a bit more.

Bandwidth allowance. A higher priced Internet web hosting service provider might offer you unlimited bandwidth allowance, however most of your lower cost options will not. You want as much bandwidth allowance as you can get. Most services deal with bandwidth on a monthly basis: for example, you will be given 500 GB of bandwidth transfer a month. 500 GB is an excellent amount of bandwidth transfer for a low cost Internet web hosting service provider.

Compatible with any server-side software you need to use. Different people have different software needs for their web site, so this has to be looked at on an individual basis. If you have a web site designed in ASP, or you plan to build it with ASP, for example, you will have to make sure your Internet web hosting service provider has the ability to support ASP. Or has a CGI bin, or has PHP support, etc., etc., whatever software you intend to use with your web site.

Reliable servers. Unfortunately, many cheap providers are cheap because they do not have the strongest servers or the strongest technical backing. Unreliable servers can cause technical problems causing your web site to go down for indefinite periods of time, even crash entirely. You want to make sure that your inexpensive hosting provider has a good track record for reliability of their servers.

The best thing to do when you are looking for a web host is to do your research. Find out what other people have to say about the provider. There are many web hosting directories on the Internet that offer reviews of low cost web hosting providers. One good place to start is Cheap Web Hosting Directory  (editor's note: you can also check HostReview's custom host search), which, as you might expect, includes not only reviews for cheap web hosting providers but a full articles base for both beginners and experienced web hosting users.

You will also want to check in and see what former and current clients have to say about a given provider. What have their experiences been? Would they recommend the provider? This is one of the best ways to get the real dirt on any particular provider. Doing your research and knowing what to look for is one of the best ways to make sure you get a good web hosting service provider.