Why You Should Be Willing To Pay (a bit) More For Your Web Hosting

Many years ago, web hosting was relatively expensive, and so were domain names.  Based on my memory, Network Solutions (when they were the only player on the block and you had no other alternatives) used to charge $90 USD per year for a domain name.  

The cost for domain registration and web hosting have dropped significantly.  However, while I feel the reduction in domain name pricing to be a good value, I most certainly do not recommend my clients go with the most inexpensive hosting solution. 

 Web hosting is critical to your business.   Your web host will determine your websites uptime, and could potentially impact your search engine ranking, delivery of emails, ability to install customized scripts or programs, etc.  It can have a significant impact upon your business in many ways.  

Cheap web hosting is not a good choice for your business.  Affordable web hosting - meaning a good quality service at a reasonable cost is what merchants should be looking for. 

My clients generate income from their website.  That is the concept of an e-commerce website.  If the website is down, the store is closed.  It’s clear to see why quality web hosting is important.

My colleague Anthony Jewell at Active Checkout has taken a more detailed look at this through his article — Web Hosting Downtime Will Cost You Sales.

I suggest that anyone researching to find a web hosting provider get educated on the subject before making a decision that could have a potentially damaging impact upon the business.  Remember - every website hosting service will appear great at first glance.  If and when a problem does happen, it’s most likely to occur at the most inconvenient time.  For example, when your company has grown significantly and you need to install an analytics package in order to track referrers back to an affiliate you just partnered with, or after you have invested significant time into optimizing your website for Google only to find out that your IP address was blacklisted. 

These are just some things that could potentially happen.  I guess I should close by saying, make an educated decision.  A few extra dollars a month in web hosting can mean uptime and success compared to downtime, lost orders and frustrated customers.