Guidance on shared web hosting needed.

Value on $10 versus $20 hosts appear similar.

[SpyderWeb]

Has anyone found the added value between a $10 and a $20 host, when the benefits touted appear similar?

[danieljean]

Most people never need more than basic hosting, so a cheap plan is ok.

Where you can regret being too cheap is using a host that has little or no support. Better spend $20 a month and have 24/7 support in case things go wrong than $10 and be out for a week-end when your system crashes.

[devildude8989]

I no longer care much about the price.

1) Support
2) Uptime
3) Price

Way too many crap hosts out there!

[twist]

There is a forum full of people endlessly debating this topic. It can become very frustrating and time consuming. I spent 2 months their digging through the mess until I finally decided upon settling with a $30/m host which offered less in the way of bandwidth/space than most of the $10 hosts but has great uptime. All it takes is someone visiting your site while your host is down once for them to assume you no longer exist and delete you from their bookmarks. I do it all the time. So for me, uptime is the most important thing.

There are other problems I have encountered with cheap hosts. Once a company had it's database hijacked and some hacker sent me a email with my credit card number on it. When people emailed the host asking what was going on they wouldn't answer our emails. I still worry about it to this day.

Another time my website was down for 3 days, they apologized for the inconvenience and thats about it! I've learned to not trust any company that doesn't have a month to month plan or promises the impossible.

[SpyderWeb]

Thanks, great points.
Support is my greatest concern.
I'm done with email only support and
I’ve grown use to prompt 24/7 phone support.
Trouble is my web host has been bought out for the second time in a year. The two previously have been reliable at $20 bucks a month. This third ones’ performance has me on edge. Called tech support, 3 minutes for human contact. Emailed tech support, 35 minutes for response. Looks like I’m happy. However, I have several other sites I’m going to publish; going with a new service has me in doubt. Searching for other potential web host has shown $10 sites offering all and more than my $20 service. I don’t trust the $10 and less site can deliver-even though they every well may be able to. Could be the best approach is to go the $20 plus route, call their tech support to find their response time, and review other benefits after finding the best three response times. Looking for a reliable host is surely a perplexing task. If you have experience with a reliable host please sticky mail me and give me its name. I feel I’m just taking a gamble with my options at hand.
Thanks,
Stephen

[danieljean]

$10 should be a sufficient amount of money for a small website, and hosts should be able to make ends meet.

There are good managed hosting plans that provide control panels for resellers. You can also rent a dedicated server these days for around $100. Install a control panel for your routine tasks, and pay for the extraordinary stuff.

You can host a lot of domains on one machine- 100 small php websites is not unreasonnable, more for static sites.

Of course if you can find a reliable host that has 24/7 support, $20/month/site is not outrageous in my books.