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How Cheap Hosting Will Cost You More in The Long Run

So, you’ve been looking for a cheap web hosting service, because after all it doesn’t matter where your website is hosted just so long as it is on the web. Website hosting isn’t important is it? Well think again, a cheap hosting service will cost you a lot more in the long run. 

If for a moment, we thought website hosting was like buying a new car. Buying a cheap car will initially save you money but that’s where the savings stop. A cheap car will cost you more in petrol, every year it will fail its MOT, break downs will occur more often and not to mention the poor performance and ride. 

Well this is the exact same for hosting providers. Getting a cheap deal on web hosting might seem like a great cost-saving strategy, but the reality is that it could seriously compromise the speed, security and performance of your website. Why bother developing a top-quality site if you’re not going to look after it properly? 

Below we have outlined the 4 major problems you will run into if you decide to go with a low-cost website hosting provider. 

1. Your website will be slow 

A slow website will not only frustrate your customers, it can have a direct impact on your rankings in search engines. One of Googles many ranking factors is the speed of your website. Meaning your slow website may be the reason you are never top on Google. 

It also has a major impact on the user’s experience, with slow websites seeing a higher bounce rate, lower time spent on the website and ultimately effective your conversation rate. Cheaper hosting services will lead to slower loading times, particularly if your site gets a lot of traffic and it’s sharing an inadequate server with a large number of other sites. 

Graph showing how page load time and page abandonment rate are correlated
 Source: kissmetrics

2. There will be numerous security issues 

There are many different kinds of security threats, from the annoyingly disruptive hackers accessing your site and leaving spam, to the seriously problematic interception of financial transactions or introduction of viruses. 

In order to defend your site against such attacks, you need to make sure that your web hosting service offers a high level of security, including secure file transfers, proper authentication, regular backups and robust server maintenance. Cheaper, less secure hosting options can leave your site vulnerable. 

3. You will receive little to no support 

In terms of customer service, you definitely get what you pay for. Cheaper hosting services offer little in terms of support, while a higher quality option will provide more such as online support, phone support, 24-hour support, a dedicated point of contact and so on. It’s not just reassuring to know that someone is available to help you, it might prove to be vital if your site suddenly crashes. 

It’s not just a matter of providing ad-hoc support either, you need to be able to trust your hosts to be on top of ongoing maintenance like software updates. Cheap web hosting is unlikely to give you a satisfactory level of support.   

4. Your site will be down a lot 

Even the best servers can go down from time to time (eg due to maintenance, power failure, hardware issues); it can’t be completely avoided. However, you can minimise the risk of downtime – and ensure that it’s dealt with properly if it does happen – by paying for a robust hosting option. 

Servers should be well maintained and monitored, notifications about downtime (scheduled or otherwise) should be communicated effectively, and – most importantly – there should be contingency plans in place. A cheaper hosting package may result in downtime that costs your business. 

What should you do? 

Whist web hosting may only seem like such a small cog in your whole business, if just one of your small cogs isn’t turning, your whole business will stop. Now you may not need a gold-plated cog to keep your business running, but you do need one that is robust and won’t hinder your business. 

We would suggest that you take your time and do your research before picking a provider. If you would like to speak to use about our website hosting service, feel free to drop us an email at studio@milkandtweed.com or give us a call on 01249 847 447. 

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