Whenever you think about starting an online business, the first thing that comes to your mind is the name of the site and its e-location or web address.
Well, you should research your market to find out a good domain name (by managing to include the primary keyword in your domain name). Once you’ve decided on the name of your website and the domain name, the next biggest question is: Where to host your website?
Web hosting is a serious booming business, thanks to the thousands of new websites being started every day. I’m even thinking of starting a web hosting business lol (just kidding).
Anyways, there are always two groups of people -
- those that prefer free web hosting for various reasons, and
- those that say ‘NO’ (I mean, a big one) to free webhosting and go for paid hosting.
Now these two groups always argue in favor of themselves and against the other group. Let me make one thing clear (this is MY opinion).
If you are blogging for fun or as a hobby, you can surely fit with free hosting. You can create a blog in minutes with Blogger, WordPress.com, Tumblr and many others.
On the other hand, if you want to treat your blog as a business and get some income (full time or part time) from it, then you have to have a self-hosted blog. In other words you need to pay for your hosting.
I’ve discussed the following story of mine in many interviews and guest posts. But its worth mentioning again. I lost my two blogs on blogger. I’ve spent about an year on those blogs and they got simply shut down one morning. And all my attempts to bring them online failed!
So if it is free, it is not yours. Oops, and I forgot another recent story. One of my Tumblr blogs got suspended as well.
Identifying a reliable web host
So coming to the core topic of this post, if you’re looking out for free or cheap (both sound as synonyms to me), then you are not being serious. And you’re not being responsible about your business.
Why is “paid” reliable. Well, nothing is reliable, just to say. But when you pay for something you got someone to question and someone to work for and fix things since you’re a PAYING customer.
If its for free no one is gonna bother. There is no need for someone to bother, unless they’re being so nice (there will always be a catch).
Secondly, paid web hosting is not only about reliability, but it is also makes your blog/website yours. With free web hosting it is not the case.
Thirdly, you absolutely have no or very limited flexibility with free web hosting. You cannot tweak your blog’s design, SEO or any other features to your taste and requirement. You have so many restrictions on top of you.
Is “flexibility” related to “reliability”? Of course. You never know when those restrictions could change or could be altered by your web host. Since there are rules, you abide by them. The rules could suddenly change one day, you might never know and you could be violating those rules already.
The web hosting company can suspend or delete your blog simply because you were not abiding by their rules.
But going for a paid web hosting doesn’t solve your problems completely
While paid web hosting can be more reliable when compared with free and cheap web hosting, not all paid web hosting companies are reliable. Here are some “signs”.
Check the reputation of the web hosting company. Is it a company that has a good history and good reviews from other users?
Check out the policies/terms of service of the web hosting company. If possible look for a page that lists their policy changes. If you find that the company is changing policies too often and is making drastic changes every time, you cannot rely on such a company.
Does the company offer web hosting plans at various levels? Like shared, VPS, dedicated - and even various sub-plans in each level, like Hostgator, for instance, which offers Hatchling, Babycroc, and similar sub-plans on the shared plan? This is important because, you should be able to choose the right plan for your type of business. Not all businesses are equal and you cannot go with the floods here.
Also you should have the option to upgrade or downgrade at any point, if needed. You should see that your web host offers this facility.
Spend some time to research about the web hosting companies that are available. Read reviews, analyze their plans and other things I mentioned above. You should also see that the one you choose is affordable too!
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