So I get this question a lot “is it really worth paying more than you have to for web hosting?” Of course not an easy question to answer because I don’t know which web host you’re talking about and what type of site your building.
The type of site makes all the difference because if this is just a hobby site and not something that makes you money then by all means feel free to skimp. But if this is a business/ecommerce site or something that you in any way rely on then you really don’t want to take the fact that it’s always going to be working for granted.
Now I don’t want to give people the impression that just because you’re paying more that your guaranteed better service, as we know from live in general this isn’t always the case. But when you look as hosting packages from reputable providers then you’ll often see that the more expensive options feature:
- Better uptime guarantees
- More space for files and databases
- More bandwidth so if you do get more traffic you don’t get cut off
- Better support (maybe a separate 24 hour line or guaranteed turnaround time)
Those are the main points to look out for and in general if you want to cover the above points like guaranteed uptime and better support then you’re going to have to pay for it. To be honest if you see a deal that’s too good to be true on the above points then it generally is.
I suppose it all comes back to how important the site is to you and how much if any money are you going to lose by it being down. Also consider the extra you may have to pay for a quality web host as opposed to a “cheap” one as the difference could only be around £30 more a month which to me isn’t huge.
Hopefully this post clears a few things up about how much you may want to spend on a service. Maybe in my next post ill compare some different hosting providers to let you really see the difference in prices, until next time.
