Buying a shared hosting package takes more than simply signing up by clicking on an eye-catching ad, and getting carried away with the long list of freebies offered by shared hosting providers.
Before you buy a low cost web hosting package, here's a quick-check list one must use, to ensure that they don't end up signing up a bad deal.
Before you buy a low cost web hosting package, here's a quick-check list one must use, to ensure that they don't end up signing up a bad deal.
1. Proper Selection of Host
Beware of biased web hosting review sites; there are hundreds of sites that offer biased hosting advice; they rate the shared hosting providers by accepting money from them, and promote certain hosts by stating untrue facts about their services.2. Bandwidth and Disk Space
Beware of catchy ads & freebies offered by various hosts, and don’t get carried away looking at the long list of free goodies like free website builder, unlimited add-on domains, unlimited MySQL databases, unlimited bandwidth, and disk space etc.In reality, no shared hosting provider can give unlimited bandwidth, and/or disk storage space; when you read the minute details in 'Terms & Conditions' , you'll most likely come across a clause stating that the host reserves the rights to suspend your hosting services if bandwidth used by your account crosses a certain limit, or causes over-load on the shared server.
As per my personal experience with NetFirms, and JustHost, when your site starts receiving about 2000-3000 visitors/day, your bandwidth will most likely exceed the permissible limits. At this point, you'll be forced to buy an expensive reseller/vps/dedicated hosting plan.
So, make sure that you read all the clauses in the agreement, and understand what bandwidth, and server load will be good enough to cater to your needs.
3. Customer/Technical Support Team
You are most likely going to need frequent assistance from the customer support & technical support team; so, it's important to make sure that your potential hosting provider has a proficient support team capable of handling your queries.More importantly, the support team must respond to your queries within 12 hours, otherwise you'll have to wait endlessly for hours together to get a response every time.
4. Valuable Freebies with Package
cPanel, PHPAdmin, Fantastico, and free Web Traffic Monitoring are some of the valuable freebies that one should look out for.cPanel is the most common, and the most convenient control panel; make sure that your host provides you with cPanel.
Additionally, free web traffic monitoring packages are Webalizer are also offered by most shared hosts; hence, you must also make sure that you host provides you with the same too.
Amongst the various freebies available with various shared hosting packages, PHPAdmin & Fantastico are two things that are must-have on a shared hosting package, as they make your life lot easier.
Same applies to email accounts, and FTP accounts provided by your host; having limited count of FTP accounts or email accounts will make it difficult for you to manage an interactive site with several users.
5. Number and Quality of Templates in Free Website Builder
Most shared hosts provide free website builder software, but it’s important to check how many free templates are available, and good they really are.5-10 low quality free templates isn’t what you’d expect in a free website builder software that comes along with a decent shared hosting package.
6. Add-On Domains
Some shared hosting providers allow only limited number of add-on domains to be hosted free of cost, while some DON’T allow you to host domains not registered with them (such as JustHost). So, you must make sure that your host allows unlimited add-on domains.7. Getting the Best Pricing Deal From Your Host
Most hosts will display a retail price of their hosting package, but when you try to move away from the page, you’ll get a message saying “stop! We’ve decided to offer you 50% discount!”, and connect you to the live chat support automated system.Moreover, you can find several online discount coupon codes for hosting packages offered by famous hosting providers like JustHost, HostGator, GoDaddy, NetFirms, FatCow, and the likes of them. Upon entering that discount code, you can avail a good deal of discount, which may range from as low as 5% to as high as 50% or sometimes even more! So, don't simply pay the price that's displayed on the hosting plans listed on your potential host's website - always seek discounts!
8. Free Advertising Credits and Overall Value of Hosting Package
When you weigh all the options, it’s important to find the best deal in terms of overall value; it’s not about just the pricing part, but also about what you get, against the money that you agree to pay.Remember, many hosts give free advertising coupons such as Google Adwords $50 free advertising credits, Miva, MySpace, FB, Yahoo! Advertising credits as a part of their premium packages. So, you must take all the aspects into consideration before making a decision.
Most shared hosting providers give you free MySQL databases, while others don’t; so, make sure that your host DOES provide you with free MySQL databases (unlimited).
For instance if you end up paying $5/month with minimal freebies, but you get free advertising credits worth $100, unlimited FTP/MySQL accounts, website templates, and other stuff for say about $6-6.5/month, then it’s quite obvious that the latter one is a much better hosting package on the whole.
