It is said that information wants to be free. That’s a wonderful sentiment, but the information contained in your website needs the help of a web hosting service to get to your audience, and those services want to get paid. Web hosting is a necessary expense for all but the tiniest of websites. It doesn’t have to be a crippling expense, though; here are some ideas that could help you minimize your web hosting costs.
For starters, there are a number of pertinent questions you can ask your existing web hosting company that might uncover ways to reduce the size of your bill. Web hosting is a competitive business, which compels the companies in it to work hard to retain customers. If you’ve been with the same hosting company for a while, you probably have a good idea of just how much bandwidth and storage your website requires. You also may be on a service plan which offers more of these resources than you are using. Ask your company if they would lower your bill in exchange for bringing your bandwidth and hard drive limits down closer to your actual usage.
Another thing to inquire about is ad space on your website. Obviously, if you are generating money by selling ad space yourself, this can be a painful thing to offer to someone else. Web hosting companies are usually quite interested in online advertisement, though, and they can put the space on your site to good use. If you do make this offer to your hosting company, keep in mind that they have just as much access to your traffic statistics as you do. You will find they are more interested in reducing your bill if your site is seen by a lot of people.
If you can’t get your bill from your current hosting company down where you want it, it’s time to find a replacement. This can be a little tricky. The hosting market is extremely crowded and, as noted previously, extremely competitive. There are plenty of companies out there offering rock-bottom prices; not all of them deliver reliable (or even acceptable) service in exchange for them. One good place to start a discussion with any potential hosting service is to ask them for references. A company that is on the up-and-up should have no difficulty in pointing you towards a few satisfied current customers.
Similarly, you can ask to see a hosting company’s uptime statistics. Every hosting provider out there promises to deliver stellar performance in this arena, but of course not all of them do. Getting a look at a company’s stats will let you decide for yourself whether or not their performance is acceptable. Even if you don’t feel technically-minded enough to interpret these statistics, asking for them will tell you plenty about the company. Any company that is reticent about handing them over probably has something to hide.
There are plenty of ways to get your website hosted without spending tons of money. The ideas presented here are just the tip of the iceberg. If you get passionate about saving money on web hosting, you’ll discover other great ways to save. Start off by asking the questions suggested in this article and see if you like the answers your hosting service gives you.