Cheap Web Hosting: Too Good to be True?

[DXL]

I have a few clients with hobby sites that don't have significant bandwidth or storage needs, and I've been looking for various inexpensive hosts. I've come across a few that charges as low as $2/month with a minimum 12 month prepay, and one company even offers a free domain name registration with that.

Is there a catch that I'm not aware of? Hosting companies like those who advertise during the Superbowl offer inexpensive hosting, but they offer plenty of "extras" that I'm sure add up. But $2/month and a free domain name seems to good to be true, what should I be looking for in terms of catches in the fine print?

[benevolent001]

Sometimes they dont allow you to take domain from them , you cant transfer after say one year, just ask if its there before signing up

[piatkow]

Check out forums for complaints about poor support - but remember people seldom start threads on how good their hosting service is.

Transfer costs for domain names.

Do they force the use of a dial up service for uploading? (Don't know about USA but in the UK this trick is a little revenue earner as they are entitield to revenue share with the phone company)

[Sharpseo]

The biggest problem I've run into with bargain hosting is slow, overcrowded servers. $25/year sounds great, but your site is probably going to crawl (at least on occasion).

[thecoalman]

The catch is they probably don't get php and Mysql or equivalent or a very small allocation of resources for it. In comparison I'm on a shared hosting plan for $10 a month. I have loads of bandwidth and loads of disk space, if I was serving video all the time I'd be set but most of my traffic is to phpbb forum. Roughly 7000 page loads a day which puts me up around the limits for SQL queries I'm allowed.

The disk space I will eventually use up but the bandwidth...pfffft last time i looked it was like 3%... lol

Do they force the use of a dial up service for uploading? (Don't know about USA but in the UK this trick is a little revenue earner as they are entitield to revenue share with the phone company)

This wouldn't work in the US, local phone calls are paid for by a static monthly fee. Unless you in the middle of no where local phone acces to a ISP is given. ISP's also provide unlimited acess for a static monthly fee too, connecting to the internet would cost you the same if you were connected for 1 minute or a year.

[encyclo]

The cheap hosting companies make money on volume, so the disadvantages are that they overload the server with hundreds of websites, they cut back technical support to the bone, and often they have restrictive terms of service and lock-in contracts to try and keep the customer from moving elsewhere.

Ones which give a "free" domain can be very problematic, you must ensure that the domain name is properly registered to you/your client and not to the hosting company.

The best practice is to never use the same company for the domain and the hosting [webmasterworld.com], check the terms of service meticulously for any hidden catches, and refuse any offer too good to be true.

Having said that, for hobby sites and small business sites, it is rarely necessary to pay more than $8 to $10 a month for a decent but simple shared hosting plan from a reputable provider.

<edited: spelling>

[edited by: encyclo at 2:57 pm (utc) on Mar. 23, 2007]

[webdoctor]

I have a few clients with hobby sites that don't have significant bandwidth or storage needs, and I've been looking for various inexpensive hosts.

Why don't you get yourself one decent hosting package, and resell hosting on to each of your clients?

[Beagle]

I have two sites that would probably be classified as "small business" as far as size (they're both content sites with affiliate marketing). I have hosting for a little under $5.00/month per site for a 12-month contract, including MySQL, PHP, and Cpanel. The host has a very good uptime record, and even on a shared server I've never noticed a problem with slowness. They will help you register a domain, but it's not free and the registration isn't with them (which is probably a good thing, actually).

I think anyone with a hobby site would be very happy with this at <$5/month. But there are reasons that someone with a serious ecommerce site would not want this hosting, and those reasons help keep the price down:

>> There's good tech support, but it's not live 24/7 - live support is limited to specific hours. In the several years since I've been hosting with this company, I've never had any down time because of technical issues, but there's always that chance.

>> The size and bandwidth limits are fine for me, but probably wouldn't be for someone working with a large database of products or lots of direct customer transactions. They could still host with the same company, but would need a more expensive package. Since my only business is through affiliate links, this isn't an issue.

>> As the previous post hinted, the package is for one domain. It's expected that those with multiple sites will sign up for a reseller account, even if they're "reselling" only to themselves.

There's one reason I picked this hosting company over any others: It was recommended to me by someone who I not only completely trust, but who also has developed websites of all sizes for clients as well as for herself. In the case of even cheaper hosting, I think I'd want to talk to some people already using it. If there's a user forum (my hosting company has one), it could give an idea of how satisfied - or not - people are.