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.