Many people, especially newcomers, when they register their domain names, are convinced to sign up for a hosting account with the company that registered their domain name. That could be godaddy.com, yahoo.com, or any number of other domain name registration companies. That’s really unfortunate, because the hosting services that those people usually get don’t usually meet the needs of an online entrepreneur. Those hosting accounts simply lack the functionality you really need to promote your business.
Here’s what happens: domain name registrars will offer you a low-tier hosting plan. Since customers who register domain names are often beginners, they are not aware of all the hosting options that are available elsewhere. They think that just because the company they are dealing with can register domain names, they must also have the best hosting.
Long story short, people who buy the hosting offered when they register their domains are usually disappointed once they start their new online business. Although they got what seemed like a low price, they will find out later, when they compare it to other offers, that it really wasn’t that great.
But that is only part of the problem. As they get more and more involved in running their new online business, they find that there may be some special software they want to run on their website. Maybe it’s a shopping cart or maybe a content management system. When you look at the software requirements and compare them to your hosting account, you will see that your hosting account is not compatible with the new software. You see, most marketing related software will use PHP or mySQL databases. If your web hosting account doesn’t support PHP and mySQL, you’re simply out of luck.
Of course, these customers can go back to their hosting provider, who will explain that the features required to support the new software are available to them, but they will have to ‘upgrade’ their hosting account. And the update is not free, by the way. Their original hosting may have only cost $7.95 per month, but the new upgraded hosting will cost them $25 or $30 per month. Now, all of a sudden, that great hosting deal doesn’t seem so good anymore.
Don’t waste your time and money with “bargain” web hosting that won’t get the job done.
Another mistake is trying to run your business with free hosting. First of all, if you are looking for free web hosting because you are not willing to spend a small amount of money on your own web hosting account, you better give up right now. If you want to do everything for free, you are not looking for a real business, you are looking for a hobby.
Usually when you opt for free hosting, your website URL will end up being something like “freehosting.megacities.com/18987/~parkavenue/1793”. If your only interest is having a place on the web to display your family photos, maybe free hosting is right for you. But if you’re trying to run a business, free hosting can be a huge disadvantage. For one, the URL doesn’t look very professional.
And free hosting companies often display their own banner ads on their website pages. How do you see that to your potential customers? Imagine if you are trying to operate a family oriented business and when prospects visit your website, there are banners advertising “Adult Chat Rooms” on your pages.
Types of web hosting: Mainly, there are 2 different types of web hosting. One is based on Microsoft Windows and the other is based on Linux/Unix. My personal recommendation is to stay away from Windows based hosting. I’ve had friends who opted for Windows hosting only to find out later that much of the software they wanted to run was not compatible with Windows Server. Most web-based software used for marketing purposes is designed to run on Linux servers, so I wouldn’t recommend anything other than Linux-based hosting.
Now that we’ve established the need for Linux-based hosting and that you shouldn’t get hosting from the same place where you registered your domain, the question is: Where do you get hosting?
I’m going to let you in on a little secret: all those banner ads and emails you’re likely to see promoting hosting deals: IGNORE THEM. The absolute best accommodation I have seen is available at very cheap prices on Ebay. Yes, eBay, the online auction.
Just go to ebay.com and search for “reseller web hosting”. By getting a reseller hosting account, you get all the hosting you’ll ever need. This is how it works: a reseller hosting account allows you to sell hosting accounts to other people. One of the benefits of a reseller account is that you can usually host an unlimited number of domains.
At this point you may be thinking that this is not for you because you are not interested in selling accommodation to other people. You only want hosting for your own business. That’s fine, you don’t need to sell hosting with the reseller account. You can use it only for yourself. You can use it to host the new domain you recently registered, and then later on, if you register more domain names, you can host them too, without paying more money for hosting.
I bought a reseller hosting account on eBay about 3 years ago. It’s fully featured, reliable, and the service and support is excellent. I pay $139 a year and currently have around 95 domains hosted. Do the math: that works out to a little over a dollar a year for accommodation that has everything I need. I think it’s a pretty good deal.
If you don’t want to get a reseller account, you can get even cheaper. I have another hosting account that I bought on eBay that only hosts one domain, but it’s only 75 cents a month. This 75 cent account supports PHP, mySQL, has unlimited space and bandwidth, unlimited email accounts, and just about everything else you can think of.
I strongly recommend that you check out hosting deals on eBay before making any other commitments. Here are the features you want to make sure your hosting has:
1) Linux based web server
2) CPANEL administration control. This is the web-based manager where you can check traffic statistics, set up mySQL databases, set up email accounts, and much more.
3) Fantastico: This is an installation aid that is very useful to have. It allows you to automatically install various high-powered software applications with just one mouse click. Do you want a WordPress blog? Click and you have it, ready to roll. You want an online forum – same deal, click and it’s there. Catalog and shopping cart – You guessed it, click and you will have it.
It goes without saying that you should check the seller’s feedback on eBay before committing. See what other customers have to say about the service. You want to make sure you are dealing with someone reputable.