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Views of the Web: You Get What You Pay For
by Steve McCabe

While it’s true that the price of hosting a web site has come down considerably, the old adage is true: you get what you pay for.

In short, though the cheapest web hosting solution may be what you want, if you do want to take it beyond the most basic level you may have to pay more.

Let me use a simple analogy, your telephone service. Today in Dominica we can shop around a little for a phone service. If it’s just for your home and all you know you will ever need is one line and nothing more, it may be a simple choice based on price.

But what if you know you want additional services – extensions, caller ID, voice mail and so on? Then you have to compare the cost of those services, and the balance may swing to the other company whose basic price may be more but can offer just what you need.

Then again, if your phone is for your office, a whole different set of criteria may apply.

So it is for the decision to choose a web host. If it’s for a personal page there are even free services that can get you started. But if your web site is at all business-related then you need to spend a little time planning-out how if you want to grow over time.

For instance, when choosing a web host, you may want to consider the following:

- How much disk space is allowed?

- Bandwidth allowance

- Downtime - How reliable is the hosting service?

- Number of e-mail address that come with the account

- Additional features such as databases, ColdFusion or PHP

- E-commerce – do you get a shopping cart?

- Technical support – how efficiently does the web host respond to your problems?

- Statistics – is it easy to see that critical information that shows how effective your site is?

A recent article on the BBC New web site illustrated one of the pitfalls that can happen if you start a web site without thinking of how your business may need to grow. Someone created a web site that contained a large document. The site was by chance picked up by a huge web site that linked to his and thousands of people downloaded his document. Before he knew it, his meager bandwidth allowance was exceeded and he was facing a huge bill from his hosting company! Indeed, at Carnival our site aVirtualDominica.com gets a huge amount of traffic and we have to pay additional bandwidth charges.

Of course, it is frequently easy to upgrade a basic package to one with more features such as additional disk space or e-mail addresses, but bear in mind that web hosting companies often use a cheap package to get your initial business, then make the money from the additional services you have to buy.

So, don’t just go on price, take your time. Look for the comparison chart that all good hosting companies have that will show you exactly what you get, and compare with other web hosts. Or use the Web Hosting section on a site such as CNET.com. As they put it in a recent article: Are cheap Web hosts worth the cost? As with most stupendous bargains, beware the cheap or free Web host: it can come back to bite you…

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