Web hosting is one of the most highly consumed services on the internet. Over the last decade, the internet has become the number one portal for every possible consumable product, which has led a huge development in the web hosting industry. It used to be that only premium businesses used a website and therefore, web hosting.

Of course, as web hosting businesses built up their client bases, they were soon able to decrease their overheads, enabling them to offer their services a lot cheaper. This meant that smaller businesses could now afford to try their hand online and individuals could even afford to start personal websites or blog’s. Once one web hosting business offered a quality service at low cost, it wasn’t time before a price war started between the major hosting companies.

Web hosting competitiveness

Nowadays, thanks to the competitiveness of the web hosting industry, monthly costs have declined. The problem that most consumers do not possess much, if any, technical/web hosting knowledge. If they possess no technical knowledge, then how are they supposed to compare one web hosting service with another?

With many consumers there is one simple comparison that can be made instantly; price. Let’s face it, whether you are selling t-shirts or web hosting, the majority look at price first, and then take their time to assess the quality. As web hosting business owners, we know that just because a web hosting service is cheaper than a comparative service, doesn’t mean that it an inferior in any way, shape or form. In fact some cheap services are actually superior in quality in comparison with the services which demand a premium.

Target Markets

A lot of hosting companies are trying to home in on certain target markets to ensure they receive a regular flow of business. It would be great to obtain as many customers as possible, but by specializing in a field, your business has a much bigger appeal than if you choose to offer services in all areas of web hosting.

Budget Hosting

Let’s begin our analysis with cheap or budget hosting accounts. The first thing that professional businessmen/women will assume when they see cheap is low quality, lots of downtime, or an extremely poor customer support. While this is true in the majority of cases, there is a range of web hosting companies offering cheap, but still quality, web hosting services.

Assuming that you were to choose a cheap hosting account, there are a few factors that need to be taken into account. Cheap web hosting accounts are usually one of the following; poor quality, or used in extremely high volume.

If they are poor quality, well that sort of speaks for itself. Purchasing poor quality web hosting will only mean that you pay to upgrade to a professional service at a later. Additionally, making the decision to purchase cheap web hosting will only give your business an extremely negative image to your clients when they visit your homepage. The site will be slow and you may put off potential customers.

Web Hosting Resellers

Finally, we will assume that the majority of cheap web hosts are resellers. Whilst in general there is nothing wrong with resellers, remember that not all resellers are web hosting experts. This is perfectly fine when your hosting account is running as it should, but what happens when a problem arises? Well, I can tell you that you’ll spend quite a bit of time, batting emails backwards and forwards to their support center, which is then forwarded on to the hosting provider. Sometimes that extra time spent on messing with hosting accounts just isn’t worth the hassle for some business owners, hence why they choose to purchase a more expensive and premium based services.

On the flip side of course, you could be one of the lucky few…

When I say the lucky few, I mean the minorities that manage to get extremely good quality web hosting, with a wealthy of features, for minimal cost. Again, the points highlighted above should always be taken into account, as cheaper hosts tend to provide their services to a mass of clients, making their hosting services extremely slow.

Premium Hosting

Moving on quickly to premium, or expensive hosting accounts, we can also see a range of potential benefits. In general, consumers may find that by purchasing a premium hosting account they have access to a huge range of features, some are simply not provided in a cheap hosting account.

The actual features relating to the web hosting service is not always the important factor for many business owners. The actual speed of the service is sometimes crucial to retain customers and convert potential ones – but why?

You log onto a website because you believe that they are the cheapest for a digital camera you want to purchase, lets assume it didn’t load up within 5 seconds – what do you do?

Of course, I know 99/100 people will simply disconnect and move onto the next supplier. You need to decide whether the few extra dollars a month is worth the 0.5%-1% (example) increase in conversions. As far as most web hosting businesses are concerned, the service must be quality. If your site is slow, then no one in their right mind would purchase their web hosting via your business. Not only that but the services offered by the support from premium hosts are usually far more superior to that of a cheap host. Communication between you and your host is essential to ensure that your website is only constantly for major businesses, so this feature is why a lot of business owners choose to purchase a premium web hosting service.

The Conclusion

So from the above we can draw to a conclusion – speed and quality in general, is not really an issue when using web hosting for a leisure or recreational resource, where as it is for business owners. For instance, blogs or sports news website will be forgiven by their visitors for being slow. The visitors have chosen to allocate leisure time to search for content relating to a favorite subject.

Business based websites, where the site is physically selling a product, or using advertising revenue to turn a profit, need to take much more consideration when choosing their web hosting. Personally, I’d definitely choose a premium service over a cheap web hosting service for businesses, as I wouldn’t want to risk losing potential, long term customers.

If you are currently using web hosting for a hobby or portfolio based site, where revenue is not really an issue, then cheap hosting is fine. Visitors have dedicated themselves to visiting your site; an upgraded hosting account probably won’t bring many more people through the door.

Business based websites definitely need to ensure that they are using a premium service. As suggested, by choosing not to use a premium service you are potentially losing customers all day every day. Spend the extra few dollars and reap the rewards. Another thing – if you are using cheap and bad quality hosting for your business, change it as soon as possible. Forget what you have paid for your cheap hosting account and don’t bother waiting for it to expire and receive the full benefits of premium hosting immediately.

This excellent web hosting buying & selection guide is written by Abdul Vasi who is the founder of HostCats Web Hosting Company offering both Windows & Linux Hosting Services from 2003. The company has a excellent client base with good reputation listed at RatePoint. If you have any web hosting related technical, sales issues you can get in touch with him through twitter