I was reading post last week, on a search engine optimisation (SEO) blog. As I’m interested in SEO and there were several other interesting posts, I bookmarked the site and decided to go back later.
When I went back to the site (5 hours later), I found that the blog was ‘down.’ This can happen to literally anyone, so later that night I tried again and it was still offline. The next morning I tried it again and found it was working, but really slow – too slow to use without going nuts!
I tried it again this morning (a week later) and once again it’s just too slow to use.
Get the best hosting you can afford
As with many things in life, when it comes to web hosting, you get what you pay for – especially with ‘cheap’ hosting packages!
You can have the most optimised site, with the most kick-ass content and stunning design, but you will really struggle to build a readership, if people find your site to be unreliable.
A solid, reliable host should be the foundation of a commercial website, not a place to cut corners. The cost to your business of using a cheap hosting provider can be immense.
You hit this one right on the nose! We see it everyday where clients go to budget host XYZ to save a few bucks, and then complain that their site is slow, down, etc… and then it starts affecting their bottom line in loss of sales and readers.
When hosting is too cheap, the host has to cut corners to make a profit, and this is often accomplished by packing customers onto servers to maximize profit. The downside is this often translates into overtaxed servers, so dynamic pages (like a blog) are slow to load, mysql errors start to pop up, and the website is not a pleasure to use or browse.
Look for a host that is not bottom of the barrel in terms of price, has responsive support, is not vilified in reviews, and has some experience with the type of webpages you use. A few dollars a month more can translate into big savings when you avoid downtime, and their support does not have you pulling your hair out when trying to solve simple issues.
If you run an ecommerce store, finding the right host is even more important, as having a problem with your online store can mean a loss of sales. If your host cannot fix issues quickly and correctly, this prolongs simple outages, which compounds the losses you experience, and negates *any* savings on hosting.
Rob – LexiConn
Thanks for all those tips and pointers Rob. Extremely useful!!
I do a ton of research on hosts before getting packages. I’ve only switched once, and my current host is pretty good with uptimes. However, I am definitely planning to switch to a higher-performance host when my budget allows…
The thing about “cheap” hosting is that it’s affordable. Some people (17-year-old’s for instance) simply cannot consistently produce money for super dedicated servers. We have to get the best deal at a price we can pay.
However, I wouldn’t buy free hosting, or $2/month hosting. You have to know your needs and do the work.
Between those awful $2 a month hosting providers and dedicated servers are many great, extremely reliable providers.
By the time a site / blog has generated the traffic that needs a full-on, dedicated server, it should already be able to generate the income required to cover the costs.
Or you could always have your hosting ‘gifted’ to you, by a host who wants access to your readers? That’s what Chris Brogan and many, many other well-read bloggers do.
I don’t think I’m famous enough for that yet, haha. Maybe one day…who is he hosted with?
Rackspace – I’m not a fan of them myself though.