Is Free/Cheap Website Hosting Better?

The age old saying of "You get what you pay for" always stands true, especially when it comes to hosting company and design costs. There is no such thing as "FREE HOSTING"! you will pay for it in the end, and I will explain why!

Website hosting is a multi-million rand industry, and giving away hosting is not lucrative to any company. The only reasons that a hosting, or website design company would give you free hosting would be under the following conditions:

1. The hosting company company has inflated it's prices to lure you in by giving you free hosting.
2. The hosting company company gives you free hosting, but you will need to add banners to your website.
3. The hosting company will offer x amount of months for free, if you sign a long term contract, or if you pay up front for 1 or 2 years.

The reason these companies give away free hosting, or charge very low costs for hosting your website, is solely because the advertising that goes on your website is where they turn a profit, and also the servers that your website will be hosted on will be highly overpopulated!

You will soon see a decline in loading speeds of your website, and the downside is that should any customers come to your website, the majority will be turned away due to the lack of loading speeds that the server can provide.

Even the most reputable and top selling website hosting companies can be accused of overpopulating their server!

A decent server costs a small to medium hosting company in the region of R4000 - R8000.00 per month. This means that they need to sell 71 - 142 hosting packages of aproxamately R50.00 to just cut even. Any server that has 750+ accounts is a server you should stay away from! We cap our limit on each server at 400 - 450 small to medium accounts per server!

My advice is before choosing any hosting company, first find out how many clients they have per server, and find out how long they have been in business.

Sometimes it is better to stay away from cheap/free hosting providers, as they rely on quantity to turn a profit, and your website will suffer the consequences!

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