As a business owner, cash flow is an important factor. So it’s not unusual for a lot of business owners to find the cheapest alternative for many seemingly trivial things, including their web hosting. The issue is that web hosting is not really trivial at all. Many web design companies would have experienced a number of clients who walk through their doors from start-ups to long-time established businesses. All of them, no matter what stage they’re at in business, have something in common: a lack of understanding and education around web hosting, and how important it is for their website and online business.
Most business owners understand the significance of having a website, but what they don’t understand is how cheaper web hosting can negatively affect their business. This tendency to reduce costs whenever possible is one of the reasons many business owners struggle to thrive in the online arena. This is because when it comes to making decisions about things like web hosting, it really is important to way up the true cost of your choices.
The basics are the backbone of your success
When it comes to creating a thriving online presence, it’s crucial to have the basic components of a functional website in order. What are the basic components of a website? Well, your web hosting provider is the basic foundation of your website.
Cheap web hosting regularly leads to websites appearing as “down” or “offline” which can negatively affect your business reputation. When a website goes down, it drastically impacts your potential customer’s opinion of your business. They will most likely think your website (therefore your business) is poorly managed, or even think that your website is a scam website. This form of downtime is most common among cheap web hosting providers and has cost small to medium businesses billions of dollars per year in rectifying issues and missed opportunities.
That’s why deciding to invest in premium web bosting is crucial to ensure a successful website.
In today’s online environment, modern consumers are also familiar with fast, easy, issue-free transactions on websites that are streamlined and aesthetically pleasing. If you’ve gone to the effort to fulfil the latter expectation by spending thousands of dollars on an immaculately designed website and then opted for cheaper web hosting providers at the end, you’re doing yourself a disservice and throwing away a lot of potential sales. Because the look is only one component of the whole package; the user experience is another. And one way to ensure epic user experience is to invest in good web hosting.
Web Hosting for Websites is like laying the foundations for your home
When it comes to building your dream home, you need the cement foundations in place and done properly to allow for a well-built house. If it’s not level, if it’s laid uneven or on bad terrain like swamp lands, sooner or later, the house will run into issues. That’s if it doesn’t collapse altogether. Your hosting choice is the foundation of your website’s online presence. We’re not claiming here that all hosting options should be avoided if they’re cheap. We’re simply stating that choosing the wrong hosting provider could become an unnecessary nightmare for your online business. More often than not, this is experienced when businesses opt for cheaper web hosting alternatives.
So how bad is cheap web hosting?
As an SME owner, you would understand the premise that cheap enough is not always good enough. You would understand that acquiring services at a price too good to be true, usually is. Which means you would probably rather pay the extra amount for premium and save yourself the time and headache. Because at the end of the day – time is money, and you don’t want to waste yours fixing errors that could easily have been avoided. That’s why you want to pay attention to who your web hosting provider is. Web hosting is a competitive industry, with thousands of companies offering the same or similar service to businesses like yours. Doing your due diligence is crucial. You need to ask yourself, when deciding which provider to use, the following questions:
– Why are they selling the service so low?
– How are they meeting their bottom line?
– How often do websites hosted by them go down?
– What are the benefits you receive for paying this cheap?
– What potential negative impacts might this have on my business?
The unfortunate truth is that many cheaper web hosting services are located overseas and do not need to adhere to Australian legal requirements. Many use bait and switch methods, promising you the world (unlimited storage and bandwidth, free web design) and once you’ve migrated your site over to them, you find out it was all basically a lie. What’s delivered is a different kettle of fish.
Chances are that due to their location among countless other things, you’ll experience slow load page times, and frequent downtime issues. This is because their prices are so low in order to have your business that they’ve had to skimp out on areas of their service, too. One way they do this is to cut corners and not invest in enough tech support. But when websites go down, you need ample support and it needs to be 24/7. Many cheap hosting providers simply do not have enough budget leaving your website at risk of being down for a few days until someone finally gets back to you. It’s not uncommon for the person on the other end to be untrained in server management either.
Cheap prices come at a cost, and the same goes for web hosting. One way to negate this happening to you is to avoid web hosting companies that promise unlimited hosting services.
Premium hosting is actually still cheap
Compared to cheap web hosting providers you might be used to using premium web hosting providers like us are not “cheap”. But in the grand scheme of things when we consider the obvious fact that time and errors are lost money. Perhaps, it’s not hard to understand what we mean when we say premium hosting is cheap.
A cheap hosting provider will offer you inadequate services for perhaps $3-4 a month. You can receive more reputable hosting for around $15 a month. And top-notch hosting to proactively take care of your website load times, and downtime for $50-$60 a month. Depending on the size of your business and your website you may only need a $15 web hosting provider. However, to ensure tech support, consistent uptime, fast speed, and increased security – premium web hosting is always recommended.
Now perhaps it’s clearer to see that you’re not really saving more money by using cheap hosting services, but you’re putting your website and business at a lot more risk than is necessary.
