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My web host watched how many files I uploaded like a hawk and always seemed to send their hefty invoices earlier with each passing month.
I'm obviously not the only one who felt that way, because suddenly a whole industry of "bargain" web hosts sprang up all over the web.
On the surface they all sound great, especially when you think you can go from $150 a month down to $4. 95 a month!
Five bucks a month sounds great, until you realize the amount of data transfer (number of page views) and bandwidth (the amount of data transfer your host allows in a given period) you get for that low price potentially hampers your ability to do business.
This realization - along with a panic attack and a quick lesson in calculating data transfer and bandwidth - usually comes at the least convenient time.
When you exceed your limits, a bargain host usually just shuts you down with no warning. Most webmasters realize they've made a mistake choosing a bargain host when their site suddenly loads a blank page in the middle of a big promotion traffic spike.
Believe me, everything just stops!
Here are a few bargain hosts that provide good service, but you need to carefully check the fine print for how much bandwidth they allow.
www.FeaturePrice.com For about $24. 95 a month you get to host up to six independent websites with a single account. You get unlimited data storage, unlimited email and a variety of other higher end services, but their bandwidth policy seems hard to understand.
They did shut me down when we had a moderate level of success even though I paid them an extra $300 to get what they called "maximum" bandwidth. I was NOT pleased and promptly moved the site (http://www.7dayebook.com) to another host.
www.HostSave.com Host Save is another low price hosting company that delivers a wide range of services for only $6. 95 per month. They recently raised their allowable data transfer, but their policy on how much bandwidth you can use at a given time seems non-existent.
www.DotEasy.com For $25 DotEasy offers a domain name purchase along with one year's hosting. Sounds incredible until you read the fine print to discover they limit you to 1 Gigabyte of data transfer a month. Not much data once you start getting reasonable site traffic.
The moral here?
Either prepare to have your business shut down mid-stream if you get successful, or pay a few extra bucks each month to ensure you have enough bandwidth and data transfer to operate without any service interruptions.
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