Web Design: Cheap Hosting Can Cost You

As an SEO agency, we dabble quite a bit in web design and hosting troubleshooting, and let me be the first to tell you that not all hosting packages are created equal. If you are looking to market the website you have invested in, cheaping out on hosting is going to set you back significantly.

So Why Is This the Case?

1. The dreaded slow load time. Many people don’t pay much attention to this, but they should! It’s hard enough to get qualified traffic to your site in the first place. If your website loads slowly, the likelihood of that traffic converting goes way down. Imagine driving to a store and the door is locked with a note that says someone will be back in 10 minutes. Sure, some people will wait, but many won’t, and that’s the equivalent of slow load times. To check your load time we recommend GTmetrix, a great free tool that tells you if you are loading too slowly.
2. Security. This is another big one, especially if you are collecting customer information. If you are on a cheap shared hosting plan and collecting credit card information, you are opening yourself up to all kinds of problems. Shared hosting environments are generally more vulnerable, especially with the biggest budget hosts.
3. Customer service. Support is often lacking at large budget hosting companies. They get pricing down to a fraction of what good hosting costs through volume: countless websites crammed onto one server, over and over again. That is not a formula for good customer service.

We could write a very long article on why cheap hosting is a bad idea, but these three points show some of the top reasons not to cheap out. If you are not sure which hosting plan is right for you, ask the person who built your website. If they tell you to use the cheapest hosting, run. Do your research and it will be time well spent. After all, you invested time and money into building the website, so why not give it a great place to live?

We build fast, secure WordPress websites and offer reliable hosting. See our web design services.