What is the Cheapest Hosting to start my blog? This is a common question upcoming bloggers ask. It is good to look for a cheap hosting plan. However, there are other factors to consider before paying for Hosting.
Instead of searching for just cheap hosting, it is better to find out the best Cheap Hosting Plans. Quality should be your watchword in Blogging. Some hosting plans don’t offer good value for your money.
Now, you may be wondering, is it bad to go for very cheap hosting? It is not a bad idea to start blogging with a cheap hosting plan. In fact, a cheap hosting plan could just be what you need to get started.
As time goes on, a very cheap hosting may not be able to provide the resources you need to run your blog effectively. The higher your traffic, the more resources you need. But the good news is that some hosting are cheap and still reliable.
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What's in this guide?
10 Factors To Consider Before Paying For Hosting
The top features to look out for before paying for hosting are uptime, number of domains allowed, server speed, support, bandwidth, money-back guarantee and available resources.
1. UP TIME ABOVE 99%
Uptime is a measure of how long your blog or website stays accessible. It is the amount of time that a server has stayed up and running. When you have a bad hosting provider, your blog goes down easily and you will continue to lose traffic.
Nothing is more important than having a 24—7 operating web host, after all, your visitors may come to your site from time zones all over the world. You need a web host which is stable, both in terms of their servers as well as network connections.
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2. UNLIMITED DOMAINS
What am I doing with more than one blog? This is what you would think initially. But as time goes on, you will begin to see the need to have more than one domain. For this, you should never settle for any hosting that allows only one or very few domains. Unless you want to be changing hosting up and down.
Generally speaking, most budget-friendly shared hosting companies allow at least 25 domains in one account nowadays. If possible, go for a hosting that offers unlimited domain.
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3. PAGE SPEED
Speed has become a major Google ranking signal. This implies that your posts are likely to rank higher when your pages begin to load faster.
While the page load speed largely depends on the site structure, there’s also a big role in web hosting provider. For this, you need a fast hosting provider. You can also learn How to speed up your WordPress performance (blog or website).
4. REASONABLE PRICE AND RENEWAL FEE
Inasmuch as free things are not always perfect, the perfect things should also not be too expensive. Good shared hosting can be found under $5/month. And that’s not even enough to take a beautiful girl out.
Some hosting will entice you with a low initial hosting fee. It will shock you that their renewal fee is 4 times more than the initial cost. Renewal fees should be listed out before you pay for any hosting.
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5. VERY GOOD SUPPORT
It is normal to run into issues as a beginner (even experts sometimes need support). For this, you should patronise a hosting that will be able to answer anytime you call. Support is a very important factor to watch out for in web hosting. If they don’t have 24/7 customer care support via live chat, then don’t pay.
6. BANDWIDTH AND SPACE
Reasonable disk space and bandwidth is dope. Do you like limits? I don’t. You must choose a hosting with unlimited bandwidth and unmetered disk space if possible.
For a VPS hosting, you shouldn’t go below 70GB space and 2GB RAM. Unless you want to settle with just one domain and doesn’t expect traffic hike. The more the resources the more your site runs efficiently.
Inasmuch as you should pay for hosting with good resources, you should also learn to optimize your site so they don’t become too resources hungry.
7. Security And Backups
Before paying for hosting, ensure that they don’t have a compromised server. On your part, try to secure your blog using Cloudflare and adding some .htaacess snippets. Below are a few .htaccess codes to secure your site.
#Disables all directory browsing
Options All -Indexes# Disallow file Editing
<files ~ “^.*\.([Hh][Tt][Aa])”>
order allow,deny
deny from all
satisfy all
</files># Protect Wp-Config
<files wp-config.php>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</files>
Good hosting service should be able to provide schedule backup. Sometimes, your blog could go kaboom. Don’t let all your labour be in vain. If your hosting doesn’t support automatic backup, at least it should give you the option to run backup in Cpanel and support for Backup plugins if required.
8. Good Reviews
If many persons are saying good about it then it is good. Everybody cannot be wrong at the same time. Before you finally pay for hosting, you need to know what others are saying about it.
9. Easy To Use
Some hosting services have a terrible user interface. A good hosting should have a Cpanel and should be very easy to use. If they don’t have a Control panel, run for your life.
10. MONEY BACK
A good hosting should refund your money when you don’t want them anymore. Money back guaranteed at least 30 days after the purchase is cool. Don’t ever patronise hosting companies that don’t have a refund policy.
Conclusion: Don’t go for hosting only because it is cheap. Ensure that the hosting you finally sign up for is able to meet your need.
Now, you may be wondering, what hosting would you recommend for a beginner? I am working on an article to guide you through these. I have used the following hosting service providers and they are okay:
Let me know how you feel via the comment box and don’t fail to share this post with your Blogger Friends.
