There is really no shortage of web hosting companies out there who will offer you web hosting plans at a very low price. There is additionally no shortage of people out there who are opting for such plans. The thing is, you get what you pay for, and web hosting is no exception to this rule. Unfortunately, many do not realize this until it is already too late.
First of all, you cannot always trust every claim that is made regarding uptime and support. In general, what you will get with cheap web hosting will be service that is down a high percentage of the time and is unreliable overall. The main reason is because usually the cheapest hosting will be on a shared server with multitudes of other users. There is simply no way that this is not going to affect its performance in a major way.
What you can expect with a shared server is irritating to say the least. If there is a sudden surge in traffic, there will be a significant reduction in the amount of bandwidth available for your site. Not only will you be likely to experience slow loading times, but you may even end up having a complete system crash. Obviously, this can be highly detrimental to your business.
What you could do instead is opt for a virtual private server. This is a much better type of web hosting. You are still on a shared server in a sense; it’s just that there are virtual partitions separating everyone. This makes everything much more private, so what one person does won’t affect the next person. This way you won’t have to worry so much about the actions of others.
On a traditional shared server, if an inexperienced webmaster is using up a lot of resources, it could cause your system to crash as well as theirs. You wouldn’t have to worry about this with a virtual private server, as everything is privatized.
Additionally, you won’t have the same security concerns. With a traditional shared server you must worry quite a bit about what is going on with everyone else, as if one person gets a virus it could affect you as well. This is not the case with a VPS.
You will also have more access to your resources with a virtual private server. It is basically like a dedicated server, only without paying the high cost. If you were to get a dedicated server, you could expect to pay anywhere from $200-$10,000 per month! On average, a virtual private server will cost you around $50-$100 per month. This is quite a difference, and you get much of the same benefits.
The one thing that you need to know is that you should have some technical skill, as it does take a bit of know-how to run these servers. Not quite as much as the dedicated servers, but if you are not technically savvy at all, you may want to stick with shared web hosting. The best thing to do is to become an informed consumer and then decide which option is going to suit your needs the best.
