A lot many web hosting providers are drastically lowering their rates providing cheap web hosting plans to support you in giving a new face to your business. A cheap web with FTP access at a low price, own CGI-bin directory and multiple POP email accounts is what an average website should look for.

Your search for a cheap web hosting provider starts with bandwidth, i.e. the data transmission rate. If your requirement of bandwidth is low, a cheap web hosting could become cheaper in proportion to your requirement.

A great number of cheap web hosting companies are offering different hosting services. But the important question is what are the parameters of choosing a cheap web hosting provider which is reliable too. Their authenticity and reliability is to be judged. Some of the cheap web hosting providers offer unlimited bandwidth. What most of them actually do is over advertise with the hope that their clients/customers never use their entire bandwidth and if you really use the entire bandwidth, they somehow cancel your account or charge you for that. Thus a proper survey should be the start in choosing the best cheap web hosting provider.

The simplest start would be by visiting the website of the cheap web hosting company. The design and content of the site speaks a thousand words for or against the cheap web hosting company. The design would reveal the dexterity of the team working for that particular cheap web hosting provider. A poor design means that even though it is a cheap web hosting company, it is only their beginning and so they cannot provide a high quality support.

The content of a cheap web hostingsite should contain some basic information. The cheap web hosting provider’s address, contact information and terms of services top the list of content. To add to that, it should also incorporate some hosting articles and tips, knowledgebase with tutorials and FAQ pages , and a good Technical Support System. The site acts as a visiting card for that particular cheap web hosting company.

Windows plans and bigger companies are generally high-priced.

A careful and proper research is a must before opting for a cheap web hosting provider. For that      read the reviews on their site and take help from the search engines, make note of the duration      since when they are the hosting service providers.

The terms of use and the policies of the cheap web host should be properly examined.

Overselling of bandwidth and space is a continuous complaitn against some of the cheap web      hosting companies, as already discussed, which needs to be checked before you subscribe a      particular cheap web host.

Cheap web hosting industry is a competitive one; so you could extract a lot from them and their      offers. But it is always better to avoid the ‘too’ cheap ones.

Some of the cheap web hosting companies may not have full control over their servers as they      may have a dedicated server with another company. Finding this aspect would help you out a lot.

Some of you might be nurturing a belief that a cheap web hosting provider offers poor service as compared to the bigger and high cost web hosting providers. This is not true as several of the cheap web hosting providers offer a greater and better quality service as compared to some of the high rated ones. One reason for this is that they are small and therefore more flexible, more responsive and more customer oriented. Price is always one of the basic factors in choosing a web host and so a careful survey before opting for a cheap web hosting company is the only way to get your money’s worth or may be more than that.

Alok Markan, AlokInternational.in