A lot of people prefer to use services like Blogger and WordPress to host their blogs because it’s free. Unfortunately, others limit themselves to what these blog platforms offer because they are worried that web hosting is complicated and costly.

Well, it’s not, and there’s a good reason why most of the leading travel blogs do not rely on free hosts and be constrained by their limitations.

No Need to Know How It Works

If you try to understand what web hosting is by delving into the technical details of how servers are structured and setup in data centers etc, you’re going to want nothing to do with it. There’s so much jargon and confusing terminology that makes you think you don’t have the ability to comprehend or afford it.

The good news is that you don’t need to know most of the geeky side of it to set your travel blog up on a hosting service that allows you (or your webmaster) to do almost anything you want on it. After all, do you need to know the inner workings of combustion engines or how your car’s transmission works to drive it? No.

Benefits of Getting your Own Hosting

By getting your own hosting service for your blog rather than relying on the free blog platforms, you will have full control of your site and have complete flexibility in terms of the technical and creative design, the content you want to publish, and the advertisements that do or don’t appear on your blog.

Once a web hosting service is set up, most of the time, you won’t need to touch it at all for months or even years. There’s just no need to, unless you are going to do extremely complicated enhancements to your blog, in which case, the web designer or developer who is helping you out will know how to deal with the hosting provider.

So, this means that all you need to do is set it up and then pay the small fee every month, which is automatically charged to your credit card. How difficult can that possibly be?

Simplified Setup with Great Help/Support

The setup process is very intuitive and you will be walked step by step throughout the process, and in case you encounter any problems, there is a live support chat to guide you in detail. And if all this is even too much for you, there are lots of freelance service providers who will willingly assist in setting it all up for a tiny fee.

Unless your blog has an extremely large following already, all this will only set you back less than $10 a month, but most of the time, it’s less than the price of a cup of coffee (in case you’re wondering, we’re talking about the cost of a Starbucks in San Francisco and not a road-side brew in South East Asia).

Choosing the Right Web/Blog Hosting Company

There are lots of companies offering web hosting services, and if you choose the wrong ones, you may be sold a more advanced and expensive package that you don’t need, so be careful and do a bit of research first.

If you don’t want to waste time digging around, and just want to know the ideal solution for your requirements, then Hostgator.com or BlueHost.com are probably the best options, assuming you’re just starting out and have a small to medium sized blog.

These two web hosts offer the most affordably priced packages and are targeted at novice users who do not have overly complicated hosting requirements. As such, they have great customer support service with live online chat and a very responsive technicians to solve any problems you may have.

Need some feedback, assistance or have a question to ask about getting your blog hosted properly? Post your message below and we’ll point you in the right direction.

Finding the lowest cost web hosting provider for your travel blog is a lot easier than you think.

Some bloggers take a long time to critically appraise the pros and cons of many web hosts to try and choose the perfect one, but most of the time, all that effort is unnecessary, especially if you’re just starting a blog and don’t have complicated requirements.

How to Choose the Right Web Hosting Solution

In the hosting industry, the big players tend to offer the most attractive solutions when you combine pricing, reliability and support together. So if you’re price conscious, stick to the global market leaders unless you really require local support.

Shared-Hosting is the entry level (and cheapest) package you should be considering. This means your blog will reside on a server together with lots of other blogs and websites, sharing the resources of one computer.

The 3 Leading Shared Blog Hosting Companies

A good deal to one person may not be for someone else who has different needs, so it’s normally hard to suggest a one size fits all solution when it comes to technology oriented services.

But in the case of web hosting packages for new bloggers, there are a few companies that have extremely attractive offerings in terms of price, features, and services provided. This is because they are specialists in working with clients who have limited technical experience and only have moderate hosting needs.

If you’re searching for the cheapest blog hosting services, these are the top web hosts to consider:

• Hostgator (http://www.hostgator.com)
• DreamHost (http://www.dreamhost.com)
• BlueHost (http://www.bluehost.com)

The product differences between them is quite minimal and there are varied opinions on who is actually better. Most people have only been customers of one company, so it is difficult to judge the reliability of most reviews when they say that one is better or worse than the other.

Decide for Yourself

Since the choice has been narrowed down to 3 options for you, perhaps the final decision should be yours to make after you visit all their websites to read through the details and features in their packages.

You may find that one is easier to understand, or you may be tempted by another that has a slight pricing advantage. You may prefer the one that gives you a larger disk storage space or you may like the one with the most attractive bandwidth offerings.

Some people even make their decision based on the look and feel of the service provider’s website.

The Deciding Factor

Ultimately, those little things don’t really matter so much. If you want to focus on something, you should probably test out their customer/support service by clicking on their online chat service or filling out a customer enquiry form to test the speed, effectiveness and professionalism of their response.

New blog owners often get caught up trying to do detailed product feature comparisons and miss the really important issues. On the whole, it doesn’t really matter whether you get a few more megabytes of storage or bandwidth.

What you should focus on is how easy is it to set up your blog, will you get any direct assistance if you get stuck, and what do you do if you need help to solve a technical problem or any other issue. And the best way to find out is to test their marketing support to see if they manage to answer all your questions and convince you they’re the right choice.

Good luck in your Host Hunting, and feel free to ask any questions if you need feedback on anything.

If you’re already an existing customer from one of these 3 web hosts, or have another one to recommend, please share your opinions in the comments below.