5 REASONS TO AVOID CHEAP WEB HOSTING SERVICES
When it comes to the performance and functionality of your website, your site is only as good as the web hosting service it runs on. For example, if your site is slow for visitors to download – or it’s down often – then it will be less user-friendly for visitors and less SEO-friendly for Google. That’s why you should avoid most low-cost web hosting services in favour of better, more reliable options.
1. CHEAPER IS NOT ALWAYS BETTER
When it comes to selecting a web hosting service for your website, you (typically) get what you pay for. Therefore, if you choose an inexpensive web hosting platform, you will get far fewer features and services than from a more expensive platform. For example, the cheapest web hosting services often don’t include a custom domain name nor an email account for your website. Without your own custom domain name, you will have a harder time branding your site as well as ranking high in Google searches results.
Furthermore, most budget web hosting platforms offer far fewer options for customising your website’s templates when building your site. That means your site will look more generic. That’s why you are better off paying for a platform that offers you a custom domain name, email address, and more options to customise your website.
2. THIRD-PARTY BRANDING AND ADVERTISING
When visitors come to your website, you want them to see your brand – not someone else’s brand. Unfortunately, web hosting platforms like Weebly, Wix, and WordPress will place their brand logo at the bottom of your site if you sign up for their cheapest plans. (You have to pay more to get their logo removed from your site). Even worse, some budget platforms allow other companies to place ads on your site. Therefore, when you are looking for a web hosting service for your website, make sure they don’t put their brand logo nor place any other ads on your site.
3. LIMITED SEO OPTIONS
One of the worst features of most cheap web hosting services is that they limit your access to managing your website. For example, you might not get access to the source code to edit your site. Furthermore, you might not be able to add important SEO plugins or tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console. That will hurt your site’s SEO rankings. When you choose a web hosting platform, you want to make sure that you get full access to your site.
4. LESS MOBILE FRIENDLY
Most web searches are done from mobile devices. Therefore, it’s absolutely essential that your website is mobile-friendly if you want to reach your full audience. Unfortunately, many budget web hosting platforms aren’t very mobile-friendly for a couple of reasons. First, many cheap platforms offer their customers website templates – to build their site – that don’t load properly on mobile devices. Secondly, cheap web hosting services often use less powerful services to host your site. That means it will take longer for your site to download on mobile devices.
5. LIMITED BANDWIDTH
One of the worst things that many cheap web hosting platforms do to website owners is limit the amount of bandwidth to their site. For example, you might sign up for an inexpensive plan that limits your bandwidth to 1,000 visitors to your site each month. After your website hits 1,000 visitors, it will no longer be online until the start of the next month. You don’t want to limit the amount of traffic to your site. Otherwise, your audience and brand will never grow. Pay more for a web hosting platform that doesn’t restrict.
In short, when you are looking for a web hosting service for your website, remember that you will (likely) get what you pay for. Therefore, if you sign up with the cheapest service plan, expect to get limited options. Also, there is a good chance that you could end up with another brand’s logo or ads on your site. Budget web hosting platforms usually offer their customers fewer options to manage their site, as well as fewer options for good SEO. Furthermore, these cheap service plans are often less mobile-friendly, and they will limit the amount of bandwidth to your website.
