Are You Paying Too Much for Your Website Hosting?

Overview

Choosing the right website hosting provider is an important way of lowering your website hosting costs. The website hosting industry, boasting several thousand web hosts, is young and growing; while there’s plenty of website hosting choice around, finding the right website hosting can be time consuming.

There are a few things to keep in mind when deciding on a website hosting company. Below are a few pointers which directly contribute to the final cost of your website hosting plan.

Disk Space

Know how much web space your web site needs, and add a bit extra, for growth, before you choose your website hosting provider. For example, if your web site needs 200 MB of disk space, look for a website hosting plan offering at least 250 to 300 MB of web space.

Bandwidth

Think about how much bandwidth (data transfer) your web site uses. As above, ensure your website hosting plan gives you more bandwidth than your site uses. For example, if your website uses 8GB bandwidth per month, then choose a website hosting plan offering at least 8 or 10GB bandwidth per month. This again will prevent ’spikes’ of over usage, leading to higher website hosting extra costs.

Block buying

Ask the website hosting company if they have "block buying" facilities for projected extra disk space or bandwidth. But if your web site needs only 2 GB extra bandwidth, you may have to buy an extra package in blocks of 5GB bandwidth; in this case, look for a website hosting company which will allow you to purchase extra disk space and bandwidth allowance depending on your needs.

Number of web sites

If you have more than one web site, sign up for a website hosting account with a website hosting company providing multiple domains hosted on one account; this will mean your website hosting works out a lot cheaper. Ask your friends and colleagues if they want to do website hosting with you on a single account.

Applications and databases

Ensure that all the applications your web site uses (FrontPage, ASP pages, databases, CGI, PHP, etc.), are supported within the chosen website hosting account type. Find out if there are any extra fees for particular applications or associated database support. For example some website hosting organisations charge extra set-up fees to install FrontPage, while another host may offer the same features without extra costs.

Mail Server

Ensure you have enough email addresses with your own domain name (preferably unlimited); these are necessary for other email features like forwarders, and auto responders, etc. There should be no need to pay an extra fee for use of a mail server as many website hosting organisations offer this service for free.

Avoid long-term contracts

If possible avoid long-term website hosting contracts until you are sure about the particular host. Paying on a monthly basis obviously has its benefits. Thinking ahead with an established plan of action for your website hosting will help you avoid most surprises, and help cut costs, short term or long-term. Work out your growth rate and project future expansions. Keep a good record of past and present bandwidth and web space use, as this will help project future website hosting needs.

Why Choose Cyber Host Pro for Your Website Hosting?

Cyber Host Pro has earned its reputation as a market leader within the website hosting industry. We are different from other website hosting providers in that our website hosting programmes offer so many features from the start, there are no hidden extra costs. In fact, if you’re looking to save money, we can offer website hosting packages from just £30 a year.

We have a wide range of website hosting packages, whatever your needs, and whether you want to go for Linux, Windows 2008 or Windows 2003 website hosting. We offer you free set up on all reseller and website hosting plans, and don’t expect you to get involved in lengthy website hosting contracts.

As well as website hosting, we also provide domain registration, and excellent server plans for larger web sites, or those with a lot of traffic.

All shared and reseller website hosting plans offer a very wide range of services, including top of the range email systems – and remember, this sort of feature comes as standard rather than a paid-for extra with Cyber Host Pro.

We also offer a high level of customer support with all our website hosting services. This starts from initial contact.