By Saurabh Gupta
Budget hosting - Getting started guide
This is a quick summary of how to find a budget host, followedby more detailed discussion for those who are interested.
This guide is meant for those who:
- Need a modest hosting plan for a site for a nonprofit / smallbusiness / personal / etc.
- Have a budget for hosting of about $8 a month or under -perhaps well under.
- Want a free standing hosting plan (not a reseller plan toaggregate several such sites).
- Find a free plan or ISP web space doesn't meet their needs.
- Don't expect lots of extras or handholding.
THE SHORT VERSION:
Well run, reliable hosts can find it worthwhile to offer plansfor those with limited needs and budget. Some can make moneydoing it. Others find that it's a way to bring in new clientswhose needs will grow over time.
It's good advice to avoid offers that are too good to be true -you often won't get what you were promised, and neither will therest of the horde of bargain hunters that overwhelm the host'sservers with their sites. But that's not what we're talkingabout here. You can get a good host on a budget.
- First, try to get some sense of the features, space, andbandwidth you'll need. If you can come up with even a roughidea, it will help.
- Second, identify some good candidates for hosting. There areenough listed in this article to save you time in coming up withsome candidates.
- Third, look for reviews of potential hosts from actual users.As with a restaurant, the quality of a host has a lot to do withthe way it's managed. New hosts might or might not be good; andestablished hosts can go downhill if the management doesn'tconsistently stay on top of things. Service isn't alwaysperfect, but what separates the good hosts from the bad is howoften there are problems, and how the host handles things whensomething goes wrong.
- Search WebHostingTalk.com. Do a Search of the Web HostingForum at WebHostingTalk.com, by searching on the host name.Don't search on "All Open Forums" - you'll get toomany results that aren't relevant. You might try a couplevariations to allow for different ways people spell - with orwithout spaces between the words in the name, for example.
- Use FindMyHosting.com to find hosts and reviews of hosts.Their Advanced Search page lets you specify a lot of options,but often it's best not to narrow it unnecessarily. Just enteryour budget and location, and use the "List By HighestCustomer Rating" option in the lower right corner. Also,see below for more discussion of FindMyHosting.com
- Google the host's name, and variations of it, to see whatturns up.
Neither of these approaches will find good information on everyhost, or has all the info on the host - unfortunately, that sitedoesn't seem to exist. Many of the hosts mentioned below aren'tlisted on FindMyHosting.com. But these resources should help younarrow the list to current good prospects for hosting.
Some U.S. budget hosts that seem promising so far, based on aJanuary 2005 search, roughly in order of price:
E-rice.net - starts at$10/year, features should be good enough for simple sites. Nobackups, though, so keep that in mind if you have content thatchanges.
Doorhost.net - plans start at$20/yr.
HostPC - Budget packagestarts at $25/year.
Efextra.net - budgetwindows hosting starting from $4.95/month.
Links
As you might have discovered, most of the web hostingdirectories on the web are advertising driven - there are noreal reviews there. Here are a few places to look for info:
-
- Web Hosting Reviews - notparticularly focused on inexpensive hosting, but a number ofuseful articles and a list of hosts. The Related Sites page hasa number of other useful links and sites as well.
- You can sometimes find a good price on a good host or domainregistrar at
If you do find a particular site valuable when choosing a host,you might try to sign up via their links so they get thereferral credit.
DISCUSSION
Narrowing the search:
1. User Forum. A forum discussing the host's features and anyissues that arise can be very useful. You can often find answersto questions that aren't in the host's help pages, withoutneeding to contact support. It also gives you a sense for thekind of people you're dealing with.
2. A whois search on the domain name of the host might give youa sense for whether they look reliable and established.
3. Money back guarantees. Many people recommend choosing a hostwith a money back guarantee. Maybe. I'd recommend choosing ahost where you won't need the guarantee, if you can! Often itisn't worth chasing, if you turn out to need it.
4. Features. It's a little hard to say precisely which featuresyou'll need for your site, but:
- You can do a nice little site with: Linux hosting, php, mySQLdatabases (multiple tables or databases), htaccess control,several email boxes, email forwarding, and webmail.
- With that, you can run quite a few things; but if you're newto hosting you may want some preinstalled or auto installedscripts, too.
- Control panel. A poorly designed control panel (such as theone at 1and1) can make it slow and unwieldy to administer asite.
- Subdomains (help.mydomain.net, store.mydomain.net) can be niceto have.
- Multiple domains. If you need to host more than one domainname (mydomain.net, myotherdomain.org), be sure to check if theplan allows that.
You probably don't need (and can't get, on the reallyinexpensive plans) SSH, root access, or detailed DNS serversetup - though if you know what it is you can decide foryourself!
5. Service and support. Look for a reasonable turnaround time(depending on the problem) and basic courtesy (always). Andpersonally, I'd rather have them warn me in adaance aboutchanges and downtime, than worry about how quickly they respondwhen my site goes down or some new "feature" theyinstalled makes something stop working. Think about what's fairto expect at the price of the plan you're looking at. In anycase, don't ask for a lot of handholding - use the forums forthat.
6. Does it feel right? This might not work for everyone, butmany people get a sense of whether it's a company they want todo business with. Sometimes it's a good feeling, sometimes it'sa bad feeling. Don't sign on with anyone who doesn't seemcapable and straightforward. Contrary to what some people maythink, hosting is not a commodity business. There is intensecompetition, but the quality of management makes some firms abetter choice than others.
Domain names
Like others, I always register my domain names at somewhereother than my host, even if it costs more. That allows me tovery quickly change hosts if there's a problem with the site foran unacceptably long time. Changing hosts can often be done in amatter of hours, if need be - see the
Look in the
The basics
For those new to hosting:
- You will get a shared hosting plan, at this budget. Your sitewill be one of many on the physical server it is hosted on.
- You will have varying degrees of control and features(depending on the plan you choose), but something less than fullcontrol.
- Your site may be affected by the usage of other sites on yourserver.
None of this is likely to be an acute or long term problem, ifyou choose a good host.
You may be able to host a couple small sites on one hostingplan, if you don't mind administering them through one controlpanel, and your plan allows multiple domains.
If you have several sites you plan to oversee, you may be betteroff getting a reseller plan to host them all.
FindMyHosting.com
Note that FindMyHosting.com does not list every host. In fact,it only lists those hosts who are currently paying it a referralfee for new clients who find a host using FindMyHosting.com
Some people will have the knee-jerk reaction that's inherentlybad. And, it does have some drawbacks:
- Some good hosts don't like to pay referral fees, or would justrather get clients by word of mouth. They won't be in theFindMyHosting.com listings.
- Hosts who get terrible feedback may end their arrangement. Allthat useful feedback disappears.
But getting a fee if a client finds a host using the site doesnot completely undermine the fundamental idea of having honesthost reviews, as long as they aren't favoring one host overanother, and aren't trying to make them all look good. There areclearly some candid reviews at FindMyHosting.com. AndFindMyHosting.com has bills to pay, too - depending on how muchthe fee is, it's not unreasonable for them to get paid.
As always, you need to read the reviews with a critical eye. ButFindMyHosting.com is a good supplement to the inevitablyanecdotal evidence you often find by turning up a few forumposts here and there about a host.
A note on web host reviews
All comments and reviews of hosts - positive and negative - needto be looked at with a critical eye. And while they might not beexactly reflective of the truth - that doesn't mean they aren'tvaluable. In addition, if interpreted right, they seem to be auseful way to judge the frequency of problems and the way a hosthandles them. To the extent you can, it's good to assess whethersomebody understands hosting; had reasonable expectations; andtook a reasonable approach to solving the problem. If so, I canempathize with them getting "emotional" if the hostcan't fix the problem in a reasonable amount of time. That is,maybe people get motivated to post reviews when they've had aproblem - but most people aren't going to post the first timethey have a little problem, either. It's usually a big problemthat they've had real trouble getting solved.
Also, there are no doubt some unreliable positive comments, too- people that haven't been with a host long enough to tell, andpeople that are not completely independent of the hosts. Sodon't believe all the good reviews, either!
Why this article?
Some of this may seem obvious to the more experienced readers.Sure, lots of people throw out a recommendation to search forums- but search on what? And for how long? Similarly, justmentioning FindMyHosting.com doesn't really help much. Thisarticle would have saved me several hours when I first startedlooking.
And for those who can't help but say "Price isn'teverything" - there are decent hosts for these needs andbudget. Paying more will not necessarily get you a host thatdoes a better job for these needs.
This article has been adapted for publication from a
Article Source: www.ArticlesBase.com
