Web hosting is one of those small things that everything else depends on. It may not seem as important as design, development, SEO and so on, but if it goes wrong, the rest becomes irrelevant.

A bargain’s a bargain right?

It’s easy to be tempted by cheap web hosting with your eye on the bottom line. The lower up-front costs are very appealing, particularly to small businesses or those just starting out.

However, although it costs less in the short term, it may end up costing you more in the long run.

What could go wrong?

There are three major issues associated with poor web hosting:

• Downtime
• Getting hacked
• Poor/unavailable technical support

Downtime is the worst of all three. If your website goes down not only may you lose sales but potential customers might think you’ve closed down. If your site is down for any significant length of time this could also affect your search rankings.

Technical support is incredibly important in these situations. If your site does go down (and this can happen, even with the most reliable web hosts) you need to be able to get it back up as soon as possible, even in the middle of the night.

You get what you pay for?

More expensive doesn’t necessarily mean better, but it usually does. What you really need to look out for is:

• Uptime rates (at least 99%)
• 24/7 technical support
• Flexible web space packages
• Unlimited bandwidth

The last two are particularly important for growing businesses. You need a web host that will allow your site to grow along with you. If you’re hemmed in by a fixed contract on a fixed amount of space, you will be restricted in how much you can do with your site.

Similarly, although unlimited bandwidth is now the norm, some hosts may still impose a traffic limit, meaning your site will go down once you exceed a specified number of visitors. It may seem reasonable at first, but it pays to prepare for success. Otherwise, your biggest week so far may become your biggest nightmare.

Web hosting is the backbone of your online business. Given that the costs are relatively small, it pays to get it right, and not to just go for the cheapest option.

Do you have an website hosting nightmares you’d like to share? Questions are also welcomed below. 

If you liked this article you may also want to read questions to ask a website hosting company

Image Credit: sylvar

This entry was posted on Friday, October 28th, 2011 at 10:39 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.