Choosing a budget web hosting company can be a daunting task, due, in large part, to the sheer magnitude of companies available to select from. Simply conducting a search for ''budget web hosting'' on Google, for example, can turn up around a million pages. One good method to find a suitable budget web host, is to refer to a web hosting resource site, which presents a variety of high-quality budget web hosts to choose from, accompanied by links to their sites.

Budget web hosting services are usually priced below $10 per month, and while they typically include only the basic features, that doesn't mean that a client has to compromise on quality or service levels. There are plenty of budget-minded web hosting companies that are capable of providing first-class service. In order to ensure that you get the most performance for your money, it's a good idea to work with a short checklist, so that all of the important areas are covered during the search.

1. Technical Specifications. Before evaluating a budget web host, it's important to determine the technical requirements you will need for your web site, such as bandwidth, speed, disk space, server, e-mail, control panel features. Once you've determined what those are, you can begin the process of comparing available budget web hosts.

2. Company Evaluation. The most logical place to begin, is by evaluating the front page of a web hosting company. Is it professional, and easy to navigate? Can you get most of your initial questions answered there? Check out the contact information. Is there a physical address, an email address and a phone number, so that you may use whatever method you prefer, to contact them? Any firm that does not provide contact details, may be hiding something. Contact information is critical, because if you run into problems, particularly during the set-up of your website, you need to have various contact methods available in order to reach support efficiently.

3. After-Sales Support. Check to see what kinds of resources the web hosting company has available, for example, they may offer free scripts, or marketing tools. What kind of after-sales support is in place? Perhaps they have tutorials to take advantage of, or some other types of educational information, such as from web hosting executives that can guide you through the process.

4. Technical Customer Support Features. Does the company have a toll free customer number for technical support? For example, if they are based in a town outside of you own, it would not be cost effective to be required to use long distance to contact them, in order to sort out technical issues that may take long periods of time to resolve. A toll free number is not only a customer convenience, but also speaks to the company's professionalism, overall.

5. Uptime Guarantee. ''Uptime guarantee'' refers to the length of time that the server is live and serving web pages. An uptime guarantee of 99% usually means that the web host guarantees that their servers will be performing and operational, 99% of the time. An uptime of 99.9%, with 1% downtime, would involve only 8 hours of downtime for an entire year. Specifically, a downtime of one percent, comes to approximately 87 hours a year, or an average of 7 hours per month.

6. Satisfaction Guarantee. With any web hosting company, a good overall customer satisfaction guarantee is very important. While most budget web hosting companies do not advertise their satisfaction guarantee policies, they will be referenced in the terms and services agreement. If there is not such guarantee, or you are not comfortable with the policy, you should look elsewhere.

No matter what method you use to find a suitable budget web host, it's important to remember that, just because a company offers a budget web hosting service, doesn't mean that a compromise on features, quality or service is necessary. It should be very easy to find the budget web host that best suits your requirements, if the time is taken to research the features needed, and compared to companies in order to find the best fit for your needs.

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Published on: 2006-09-13 (2038 reads)