If you purchase the absolutely cheapest hosting and/or domain names you may be at risk of domain theft or may be missing out on important services and security features. Cheapest is not always the best, and remember that you always get what you pay for.

Hosting on the cheap

Price is always a factor in choosing web hosts. You would be fooling yourself if you told yourself otherwise (unless you have lots of money to burn). However, higher prices do not mean that you’ll get a good web host. Higher prices do, however, mean that you have a better chance of getting good support, since at least they will have the money to hire more staff if they want to.

I keep emphasizing that it is not a good idea to skimp on hosting. If you save $2 per month, the savings over a year amount to $24. If you used that money to choose a reliable host (instead of the very cheapest), you would end up paying $24 a year for the peace of mind that your website and internet business is safe and reliably hosted. That is a cheap price to pay!

For sites that are not so critical, I am willing to pay a cheaper price at the cost of a little more “down” time and inconvenience than my more important sites.

In general, if you run a business on the web, you will not want to take the risk of constant or long down times. Bad support and service interruptions have an uncanny ability of occurring at the worst possible moments.

Very cheap hosts may have recurring periods of problems. Hours of down time without the company even realizing it, and being unreachable, e-mail problems, FTP problems, you name it. If you are running a business, weight the cost of your site being down against the cost of a few dollars extra per month… you get the point.

As for free web hosts: you just have to make do with what you get. No real support, advertising (that you don’t benefit from), hosting problems… Many people still complain that free web hosts have lousy service. If you didn’t pay a penny for it, what do expect?

Domain names on the cheap

With the recent increase in domain name theft and other internet domain fraud, selecting the cheapest domain registration and website hosting may not be the best decision for you. Some years ago a prominent internet service provider panix.com had their domain stolen, and the high value domain name sex.com was stolen and held for over three years costing the rightful domain name owner millions of dollars.

It is important to select a registrar with high level of security and great customer service, not just a cheap domain name price. In addition to buying your domain from a reputable registrar, service features are important as well.

I always recommend buying your domains from a different provider than your hosting. Read here why, and when you are ready to proceed, read the review of my top rated domain name registrars.