The End Of Cheap Business Website Hosting in 2017

So before diving into the topic of “The end of cheap Web hosting”, let me spend a moment answering these two simple questions.

What is Website hosting?

What is cheap?

# 1 Website Hosting – Plain and simple, if you want to have a business Website, you need to purchase or rent a server to put your Website files on.  A Website design is a collection of images, text, and programming languages that a Web browser like Google Chrome or Firefox assembles for the end-user. All these files and stuff need to sit out on a server on the Internet. Most people rent this server space. Thus, they are having their Websites hosted somewhere.

# 2 Cheap – Ah, now here’s and interesting  phrase that can have lots of definitions. Cheap on occasion refers to inferior, or of low quality. Or it can be a comparison of one price to another price. For example, the price of gasoline at this station is $2.00 per gallon, while at another gas station it’s $1.93 per gallon. So the $1.93 is cheaper than the $2.00 per gallon.  Or, a third definition of cheap is a perception of something being just simply inexpensive to buy.  For the purpose of this post, we’ll go with the concept of cheap being a combination of inferior product and a perception of just inexpensive to buy.

So now that you kind of know the definitions of hosting and cheap, it’s time talk about the end of cheap hosting in 2017.

Or is it time yet?

I think we additionally need to talk about the concept of shared hosting.  Shared hosting is where Web hosting companies (Like GoDaddy) put hundreds of company Websites on the same hosting server.  Something these hosting companies have been doing for at least 15 years now. The more Websites they can put on the same server, the cheaper it is for each individual business to host their site on that server. Plus the hosting companies make more money if they can cram hundreds if not thousands of sites on the same server.   Thus you see all those prices out there for monthly shared hosting at only $1.99 to $4.99 a month, or less than $60 a year.

Now this has been a great thing for both the hosting companies and individual businesses on these servers for many years.  But, there’s been something going on now for about 2 years, and that’s the evolution of Web Design and powerful feature rich WordPress plug-ins.  Suddenly you have have Websites, with minimal development effort being able to provide rapid appointment scheduling, unique customer log-in functionality, awesome slide shows, amazing menu and navigation structures, integration of sites with existing back-end systems, and impressive security/backup features.

While this has be a great evolution in Website development and design for business customers, it’s been quite the challenge for Website hosting companies providing shared cheap hosting.  It’s not that the hosting companies are really providing “inferior/cheap” hosting. What’s happening is that their “shared cheap hosting” is no longer capable of handling the robustness of the newer WordPress Web designs that are out there.

What’s happening is that, if you have a robust WordPress Web design, and it’s on a shared hosting package, what you’re seeing is a rapid degradation of your Website’s performance.

The good news is that these larger hosting companies are now offering individual dedicated hosting solutions that can keep up with the rich functionality of the new Website designs. Unfortunately, these hosting solutions come at a steeper, less “cheap” price.

On average, each of the hosting companies out there are starting to offer “Business Class” hosting solutions for around $30 per month.   That’s a huge jump from $1.99 to $4.99 per month. You’ll  have to go from paying $60 a year to $360 a year just to rent server space for your Website.

Is that too much to pay?

Well, that’s up to each company to decide. But leaving your business Website on a shared hosting platform is trending to no longer be a viable option.

KC Web Specialists is happy to provide hosting migration support for all your Kansas City Web Design needs.  Contact us today at (913) 489-7866.