Saving Money on Web Hosting

By Matt Hedges

There is a growing popularity about having your own web site so web hosting, for business and individual use is on the rise. Many new companies have a small budget and they need to spend money on other areas as well as their website. It is also true that an individual may not want to spend a lot of money on something that is primarily a hobby. These are the customers that many of the web hosts want to meet and they have developed tailored packages to meet their needs.

If you need to keep your expenditure low, there are a number of options open for web hosting. There will be drawbacks and limitations of these services but they will come in a much more reasonable price.

Key areas of shared web hosting.

What is Shared Web Hosting? - A shared web hosting service or virtual hosting service or derive host is one of the methods that allow small business owners and individuals host their web sites at affordable or economical rates. It actually refers to a web hosting service where many websites reside on one web server connected to the Internet. This is generally the most economical option for hosting as many people share the overall cost of server maintenance.

This is why many small or medium sizes firms are looking to sign up to a shared web hosting service. Each site has its own place on the server which keeps it apart from other sites so this is not an issue but the cost factor is what is best for many firms.

If you choose a shared business web site hosting service you often get a package of things at a low price. For example are the several e-mail accounts often offered which is perfect for small and medium sized companies. It thus provides a great opportunity to easily put up a great business site.

There are good points to this system but there are also negative issues. A customer can save money but there are limitations and there may be issues that arise in the long term provision of this service:

* There is no facility to have a secure website (HTTPS) and this is because name-based virtual hosts are unable to do this because they share the same IP address and digital certificate.

* If there are times that the DMS (Domain Name System) is unable to work as it should then it is extremely difficult to use a website that is virtually hosted.

* There is a lack of functionality with browsers that are unable to process the hostname as part of the request. This is shown in the example of incompatibility between the previous HTTP/1.0 model and the newer HTTP/1.1 model. This is due to a lack of host field feature on the old model.

Web Hosting at a low price

Cheap web hosting is a wonderful money saver package for those who desire to create their personal home page, where only private information about them will be included. In such cases, the owner of the site may not have great goals, thus, does not require a lot of bandwidth and disk space. With cheap web hosting, such people can get their purpose served and at the same time save money on Web Hosting.

It is possible to have good service from a cheap web host provider and this can be shown by the following firms who offer good web hosting for a price less than $10:

* Host Gator

* IXwebhosting

* GoDaddy

* GoDaddy

* Dot5Hosting

* Lunarpages

* GoDaddy

* Hostony

* midPhase

* BlueHost

Web Hosting on a budget

People like to save money therefore it is no surprise that budget web hosting becoming more popular. It does not need a lot of investment and it can save money, yet still manages to provide a strong range of services and features. This makes budget hosting the ideal choice if you want quality service at a low cost.

Free Web Hosting:

Do you know what free web hosting is? This is where there is no cost for the web hosting service which usually features fewer functions and is offset by advertising. There are a large number of firms who state they offer free Web Hosting. If you do not need many functions and want a really low cost web host service, this is the service for you. It is common for the free hosts to offer a subdomain or directory and a number will offer the following additional functions:

* A control panel based on the web

* The ability to use script languages such as ASP, Perl and PHP amongst others.

* Having subdomain or domain hosted email accounts

* Being able to transfer files by means of FTP

* Access to relational databases such asMySQL

* Processes that are scheduled

* Have no data limitations offering unlimited space

* Community services like forums that would not be provided by a number of paid hosts

* The ability to be rewarded for loyalty and use by being awarded additional services or products

Some of the free web hosts offer basic package for free and enhance the packages for a cost. This allows the users to opt for the service for an initial trial and then upgrade when needed. Just like any other service, free web hosting has its advantages and limitations. By choosing the free web hosting services you are free from paying monthly fee, but on the other hand it may happen that the site might not be available to customers 24/7.

Limitations of Free Web Hosting:

* A finite restriction of the size of each file

It offer very small bandwidth per month compared to paid hosting

The hotlinking of files is disabled

It has File type restrictions (for example MPEG, MP3, ZIP etc.)

* The Webhosts Banner or Popup Ads will be forcibly placed on all web pages

* Free web hosts will make no guarantee of uptime

Even with these limitations, using free web hosting can be very cost effective and attractive to many users. There is no investment to host your own site and is the ideal place to start for those who want to create their own self-start internet project.

About the Author:

Republished with permission from http://www.webhostingmadness.com, a publisher of hosting company ratings, comparisons and detailed articles about web hosting.