Web Hosting

Cheap web hosting: which one should you choose?

Everybody has experienced this problem while selecting a web host. We've all wondered the same things at some point in our Blogging careers: Can I work with this cheap web host? Does cheap web hosting make sense?

Many things will influence your decision. This can and should include the web host's typical uptime, the service's performance, speed, and supported software, the technical expertise of the support staff, and of course the price.

The Best Cheap Web Hosting Providers

When selecting a web host, almost all newbies have the same question in mind: How much will this cost?

As you immerse yourself in the wonderful world of website creation, you'll gradually come to understand that, although being a determining factor in human logic, the price of a web host isn't the most crucial one.

You'll discover that there are many web hosting aspects to take into account: automatic core upgrades, DDoS defense, managed hosting, integrated CDN, and a plethora of other features that come into play if you make it to the big players.

While keeping to your budget is vital, you shouldn't just choose the cheapest host and get going. This particular bad choice is one you may regret in the future.

Gandi offers hosting plans which combine low prices and high quality for those who want to launch their site on WordPress. Unlike cheap web hosting on the market, we have the same level of quality of service as our more expensive hosting and in addition, all our hosting includes a free domain name and free SSL certificates.

Discover Gandi's Hosting Plans

New hosting customer? Get 50% off your first web hosting for a yearly subscription!

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Starter

Welcome Offer New Hosting Client

Pay by the year and get 50% off your first web hosting.

$10.00 /month
  • Domain name included
  • 1 website maximum
  • Up to 1 CPU/ 256 MB
  • 20GB storage
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Advanced

Welcome Offer New Hosting Client

Pay by the year and get 50% off your first web hosting.

$15.00 /month
  • Domain name included
  • 5 websites max recommended
  • Up to 2 CPU/up to 512 MB
  • 50GB storage

Pro

Welcome Offer New Hosting Client

Pay by the year and get 50% off your first web hosting.

$20.00 /month
  • Domain name included
  • 10 websites max recommended
  • Up to 3 CPU/up to 1 GB
  • 100GB storage

Business

Welcome Offer New Hosting Client

Pay by the year and get 50% off your first web hosting.

$25.00 /month
  • Domain name included
  • 15 websites or more
  • Up to 4 CPU/up to 4 GB (upgradable to 8 CPU/up to 16 GB)
  • 200GB storage (upgradable to 1 TB)
Pricing Options Prices for United States, taxes excluded, in $ (USD)

Included in each plan:

  • Storage expandable up to 1TB (€0.18/GB)
  • Free TLS/SSL certificates
  • Unlimited bandwidth
  • Automatic linking to your domains
  • Varnish web accelerator
  • Technical support by email

How do you choose cheap web hosting that's adapted to your needs?

You're in luck if you accidentally came to this page looking for cheap web hosting.

Simply put, it's best to steer clear of any "affordable web hosting service."

The reasons are pretty clear if you consider it from a business standpoint, using fundamental profit and loss calculations.

1. Check that it doesn't have severe resource limitations.

Cheap web hosts frequently use outdated or defective servers and/or cram in as many users as they can. As a result, each user's portion of the available resources is drastically decreased.

For example an 8 GB RAM server. If we put 100 users into that server, each user will receive about 80 MB of RAM (8 x 1000 / 100). If you put more users on the same server, users will have less RAM and issues will arise.

2. Make sure the web host makes hardware upgrades a priority.

Hard disks for servers are typically more expensive than those for desktop computers.

This is a result of their increased average life, faster performance, and higher reliability.

Any hard drive has a limited lifespan because as a resource, it degrades.

This indicates that the hard disk's risk of failing dramatically increases after the set lifetime, along with the performance declining below acceptable levels. In other words, a hard drive should be disposed of once it has reached its specified lifetime. But with affordable web hosting providers, that's not the case. They'll keep using those decrepit old hard drives.

3. What is included with your hosting?

Can you rely on a free domain name or do you have to pay extra for it? Without a domain name you will not be able to launch your site or have an email account with your site name.

Is there a free SSL certificate to protect your site? An SSL certificate is now essential to getting indexed on search engines. Even if there are free SSL certificates available out there, it's sometimes just more practical for it to be included in your hosting because it is easier to set up and connect to your web hosting.

Are backups or snapshots included? Most often, brand-new users don't know how crucial website backups are. In order to maintain your website, you should be able to rely on built-in or automated back up capabilities.

That means that the site host is responsible for backups. Every reputable server will regularly make backups of your website or snapshots and store them so that you can come back to this version if anything happens.

Site backups are a basic feature of affordable web hosting services, but it's unlikely that a free or extremely inexpensive web host would perform regular backups. Even if they do, there will be unreasonable size restrictions and limited backup storage time. They might even charge you for restoring a backup!

4. Be sure to have high-quality, reachable customer support at any time.

With cheap web hosting, the response time to a ticket is going to be long and likely not that great.

A lot of users will have comparable issues and there will not be many support agents to answer. Plus they won't be experts and might not be able to assist you with even relatively easy hosting problems.
They might just send you documentation links, and many "free" hosting sites rely on an automatic chatbot for their support.

5. What is the web host's uptime rate?

The servers are maintained by backend technicians, who do everything from connecting the wires to installing OS updates and security. Skilled server administrators are quite expensive and low-cost hosts try to avoid that expense. However, downtimes are an inevitable part of the shared hosting industry.

The best web hosts use sophisticated software to mitigate these effects. However, with cheap web hosting services, you'll be subject to insufficient and even subpar server resources.

You should expect, then, frequent and lengthy downtimes if you combine these subpar resources with untrained technicians.

6. Does the cheap web hosting provider provide the means for maximum security?

Security is one area that beginners regrettably neglect. The web hosting provider is responsible for the security of your data, but some cheap web hosting service have terrible security measures.

Even small business websites can be exposed to a variety of attacks due to overly simple firewalls, a lack of virus security, and no defense against DDoS attacks.

A notable example is the insertion of malicious code. There's a well known technique in which hackers insert malicious code via MySQL injection into databases by swiftly identifying security gaps in the data.

As a result, without your knowledge, your website picks up viruses. A single malware assault can cause the server's entire database instances to get infected if it only has one database server and no backups. That would mean every single website hosted on that database server would be impacted. As a result, if another person's website is compromised, you might also experience the effects.

7. Be aware of the location of the servers

Datacenters outside France or Europe do in fact cost less to the host on but this can cause problems with the protection of your data and the privacy of your customers' data. Rules and regulations in other jurisdictions may not be as strong.

You should never skimp on web hosting

For your website, should you pick the cheapest hosting option? The short answer is no—for the most part.

Your web hosting is the home of your website. And you'll probably need to upgrade your web hosting plan or hosting provider as the amount of traffic on your site increases. But as we saw, there's more than just traffic that needs to be taken into account for your choice of the best web hosting company.

Check Gandi's Web hosting plans

FAQ / frequently asked questions

There are 4 types of web hosting for your website:

  • Shared hosting: different users share the resources of the same server. It is therefore impossible to customize the configuration of the web server. Shared web hosting is not suitable for high-traffic sites.
  • Dedicated hosting: all resources are allocated to a single user. A dedicated server allows you to define the desired configuration and benefit from optimal performance.
  • VPS hosting: a VPS server (Virtual Private Server) is a virtual machine on which the server configuration is established when it is created and cannot be modified thereafter.
  • Cloud hosting: a Cloud server is a virtual machine on which you can change the configuration whenever and however you want. It is the most flexible solution, especially to cope with traffic peaks.

The best type of web hosting for a small business is dedicated hosting because:

  • it is based on a dedicated server which makes it possible to meet the needs of high-traffic sites,
  • it offers the possibility to customize the server configuration,
  • it guarantees better security.

Shared hosting can be good for hosting a WordPress site. It all depends on the nature of your project. Since resources are shared between different users, shared hosting must be limited to the deployment of low-traffic websites (less than 5,000 visits per month), i.e. showcase sites, blogs or small online stores whose online availability is not critical.

Shared hosting is based on a physical server whose resources are shared between different users. This type of web hosting is recommended for limited personal use. VPS hosting is based on a virtual server whose resources are dedicated to a single user. It is perfectly suited for professional use.

Cloud hosting relies solely on a virtual machine. Unlike shared or dedicated web hosting, data is stored on remote servers. Users access IT services through a secure Internet connection. Cloud hosting is characterized by its flexibility and excellent value for money because the user pays according to the resources consumed.

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