Cost of Web Hosting
Are you paying too much for website hosting? April 13, 2010
Question
Do you know of an inexpensive web hosting company? I'm currently paying $30 and need to reduce costs wherever possible.
Forum Responses
(Business and Management Forum)
From contributor C:
Is that $30 per day? Week? Month? Year? And, is it for a certain amount of bandwidth per month, or unlimited bandwidth?
From contributor P:
GoDaddy is pretty cheap.
From contributor R:
Check out Vodahost. $7.95 a month, 20GB, with free website design software that's very easy to use. Works for me!
From contributor C:
I've been using ipower.com for about 5 years and am still very happy with them.
Unlimited disk space
Unlimited bandwidth
2,500 email accounts (myname@mydomain.com - looks a lot more professional than gypsy4807@freemail.whatever!)
Website builder + templates
$5.95/month
etc., etc., etc.
They also have a $3.95/month plan with some space and bandwidth limits. I like the unlimited plan: no surprise bills at the end of the month.
From the original questioner:
Thanks for the responses. Yeah, it's $30 per month but I'm not sure of the bandwidth. What should I look for, what's unlimited bandwidth, and how can I find out what the site is running on now?
From contributor P:
Bandwidth is essentially a measure of how much data flows to and from your site. If you have a ton of visitors, or have lots of video or large files being exchanged between your site and your visitors, you would need more bandwidth to handle that.
Typically, you can start out with the lowest bandwidth plan, and upgrade it if you find that you're hitting the limit. Your current service should be able to provide you with historical usage statistics, so you can see how much bandwidth you've been using to date.
From contributor S:
Take a look at 1and1.com. Very good hosting company, excellent services. If you ever need tech support, you always talk to a live person, no waiting on line forever like with other companies, and it is only $6 per month per basic package, which is more than enough for any standard woodworking website. They have a great control panel, where you can sign in and manage your files, monitor, view your invoices and so on. After trying several other companies, I have stopped my choice on 1and1. I'm very happy with them and I have all my domains with them.
From contributor M:
I second the 1&1. Basic is $3.99/month with excellent service.
From contributor I:
After seeing these prices, I think I could reduce my monthly expense for my website. How would I go about changing hosts without losing my domain name?
From contributor S:
You can transfer your domain and registrar from one provider to another. Call your existing provider and ask them to release your domain, and then call the new one and ask them to take it over. They will guide you through the process. It is very easy.
From contributor C:
I agree with contributor S, almost. I would call the new provider first and ask what their process for domain name transfer is, etc. When you are completely satisfied that they can do everything you want in a timely fashion, then I would contact your current provider. Otherwise, I agree with his advice. I would not leave my domain registration with the old provider.
From contributor F:
Hosting packages are so cheap these days, I would recommend just going overkill on the package you need at the current moment. That way if by some off chance you get a huge surge of traffic, you don't shut down - that would be terrible. I am currently using phatservers.net for my shared hosting server - no problems at all and fantastic support.
