Inexpensive Web Hosting and other Sorts Of Stupidities
Today it appears as if everyone and their mother is providing Web hosting for sale. Don’t get the wrong idea, I believe in good competition more than anybody and I am serious about supporting this idea. Irregardless, without knowing a thing about business and how to develop and maintain it, some people still think they can start a web hosting business.
Those I find most surprising are those that offer hosting services at crazy prices. There are web hosting offers from people for $1 a year. Yes, you read right, one dollar for an entire year of service. With prices in the range of $60 to $100 per year for the minimum service, one would think this is a great deal but you must really analyze it first.
Let’s do some math. We will take a look at a case of a small web host business getting 1,000 clients. Should a company offer its services for only a dollar each then they will only make around $1,000 a year. Is it realistic that he will be able to provide anyone with services, support and upgrades with this price? I am hard pressed to think he will have enough for food alone!
Some say a good business begins with a great amount of clients. Only because I’m feeling good about my life today will we continue using this example. Just think about a provider getting up to or over 10,000 customers – an extremely motivated goal! You receive $10,000 dollars in income! With this type of income do you think a business will last a year? Imagine how much this would cost if there waas 10,000 clients. The cost of things such as rent and power could eliminate your meager income.
As always, the human brain is a wonder and it seeks ways to resolve problems. Customers purchasing this kind of service rationalize that as long as they receive the deal for a year, they don’t really care if the service is no longer in business after that, which is often the case. They have already received the service for almost no cost. So, again I ask, is this true?
All access to your email addresses, website material, etc. will be lost if your provider goes bankrupt. It doesn’t matter if you’ve already registered your domain through another provider because even in the best case it will take a at the very least a couple of days for new service to begin. That is, if you didn’t commit the error of obtaining your domain title from the identical provider.
In that case, you may even lose your domain name and will have to get a new one. Imagine the time wasted just notifying all your clients about your new email address. What if you lost important emails and documents too? Do you think this is worth the risk?
When you buy your next web hosting service, consider the support services, the promptness in answering your emails and phone calls and the time the provider has been in the market. Yes, do check the price too, but if it sounds too good to be true, it may be a good idea to look somewhere else.
If you want to go with someone else who will only cost a dollar go ahead because we’ll be glad to help you when you come back – just hope that too much damage hasn’t been done.
Posted on October 31st, 2008 in SEO | No Comments »