Jim Edwards –
http://www.thenetreporter.com
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Ever heard the saying Penny-wise and Dollar-foolish?
Well bargain priced website hosting may just represent the
perfect example of watching a jar full of pennies while
bucket loads of dollars fly out the window!
When I launched my first website way back in the dark ages
of 1997 I paid almost $150 a month in hosting and data
transfer charges.
My web host watched how many files I uploaded like a hawk
and always seemed to send their hefty invoices earlier with
each passing month.
Im obviously not the only one who felt that way, because
suddenly a whole industry of bargain web hosts sprang up
all over the web.
On the surface they all sound great, especially when you
think you can go from $150 a month down to $4.95 a month!
Five bucks a month sounds great, until you realize the
amount of data transfer (number of page views) and bandwidth
(the amount of data transfer your host allows in a 24 hour
period) you get for that low price severely limits your
ability to do business.
This realization – along with a panic attack and a quick
lesson in how data transfer and bandwidth get calculated –
usually comes at the least convenient time.
When you exceed your limits, a bargain host usually just
shuts you down with no warning.
Most webmasters realize theyve made a mistake by choosing a
bargain host when their site suddenly gets shut down in the
middle of a big promotion because of a traffic spike.
Believe me, everything just stops!
Here are a few bargain hosts that provide good service, but
you really need to really check the fine print for how much
bandwidth they allow.
www.FeaturePrice.com
For $24.95 a month you get to host up to six independent
websites with a single account. You get unlimited data
storage, unlimited email and a variety of other higher end
services, but their bandwidth policy seems hard to
understand.
www.HostSave.com
Host Save is another low price hosting company that delivers
a wide range of services for only $6.95 per month. They
recently raised their allowable data transfer, but their
policy on how much bandwidth you can use at a given time
seems non-existent.
www.DotEasy.com
For $25 DotEasy offers a domain name purchase along with one
years hosting. Sounds incredible until you read the fine
print to discover they limit you to 1 Gigabyte of data
transfer a month. Not much data once you start getting
reasonable site traffic.
The moral here? Either be prepared to have your business
shut down mid-stream if you get successful, or pay a few
extra bucks each month to ensure you have enough bandwidth
and data transfer.
At a minimum, specifically ask and read the fine print about
the hosts bandwidth and data transfer policies before its
too late!
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