There is a lot of difference between affordable web hosting and cheap web hosting. To start with, affordable web hosting merely ensures that you will be able to meet the cost of web hosting without straining your resources. Cheap web hosting goes further and ensures not only that he solution is affordable but also that its cost is low. Because you get cheap web hosting at a very low cost, there are a few more things that you may need to take care of while considering cheap web hosting.
If your web hosting is to be really useful to you, it should satisfy certain essential conditions. These are common for costly as well as cheap solutions. However, in the case of a cheap solution, the strain on the service provider is greater because he/she has to meet the costs of hosting the service within the low price that he/she collects from you. This can happen through better management of resources and operations or through cutting down on essential resources. You have to guard against the latter. Hence there are some things that you need to look at more carefully in the case of cheap web hosting.
The first thing to check in cheap web hosting is that the reliability, speed, scalability, and the support that you can get are no less than what you get from a comparable affordable web hosting service. Reliability refers to the extent to which you can depend on the system to be available at all times. This in turn depends on the uptime of the host computer, which should preferably be in the region of 99.9%. If the uptime, and consequently reliability, is low you may lose valuable business. Reliability will depend on the resources available with the company that is hosting your web site. The company should have sufficient back up facilities that ensure that in the event of any failure, the backup facility will take over to ensure smooth and continuous operation.
Speed will depend on the hardware resources and the communication backbone. You should ensure that the company has enough resources to support higher speeds with increased number of users.
Scalability refers to the capability to increase your resources at a later date at a comparable cost. Affordable web hosting that is not too cheap should normally have the provision for scalability, whereas in the case of cheap web hosting, unless due care has been taken this might have been sacrificed.
Support refers to the help and response that the company gives incase of problems and ensures that your problems are easily and speedily solved.
It is possible for a company to offer cheap web hosting without sacrificing on any of the essential requirements, but the company has to put in efforts to ensure this. Since all companies may not have the capability or the willingness to put in such efforts, you need to make sure that the company that you are choosing has indeed put in the required efforts and offering you cheap web hosting through improvement of its efficiency. This is one of the main differences between affordable web hosting and cheap web hosting.
Article contributed by : Nicole BLANC – WEBHOSTINGER | PR Department
