How to Find a Good Web Host when Your Budget is Tiny

When I got my first Web site in 2000, there will still several free options for web hosting. Even if you are able to find one these days there are many drawbacks to free hosting. They are usually only good for very small sites that need little storage. If your business grows, you will have to move all of your content and because the url with these sites is usually something like http://hostname/youraccountname, you will have to change the name when you move your site and the name on all of your advertising. Your internet service provider may offer some free personal space you can use but the same restrictions apply.

Be very leery of package deals with limited-time, low-cost or free hosting. I once had a site where the hosting was free as part of a design package. My customers and I loved the way it looked and it was getting pretty good traffic for a new site. I knew that after a year I would be charged for the hosting. Foolishly, I figured the site would be making plenty of sales by then and I'd be fine. Well, frequently the site loaded really slowly or it was down completely. Customer Service would insist that the problem was on my end. I had a friend who was very knowledgeable about computers. Somehow he was able to track where the problem originated and it wasn't on my end. When I called C.S. with the detailed information he gave me, it was usually fixed within a half hour. But it happened so frequently and their C.S. was so uninformed that it just didn't justify the price for hosting. I was forced to move my site. They wouldn't allow me to keep the design. It was like starting over. I wanted the site to look as close to the site I had had so I paid to have it redesigned. I lost what ranking I had and I couldn't afford to wait to rebuild my traffic and sales so my site closed after a few months with the new host.

As a new website owner, three things you will want to consider when choosing your web host is price, uptime, and customer service. Although, every server is down from time to time you will want one that is down as infrequently as possible. You should be looking for at least 99.5% reliability.

Keep in mind that if you are only paying $5 a month for web hosting, you probably shouldn't expect 24/7 customer support.