provided by: 
Could Saving Money on Web Hosting Cost You Money?
Have you ever seen advertisements that consistently tout huge server space and endless add-on domains for only $9.95 a month? It may seem too good to be true, even after you closely read the hosting agreement and they seem to be offering everything they say.
How can some web hosting plans be so cheap and yet offer so much?
More than likely, there are reasons behind these seemingly unbelievable deals. Here are some possibilities you may want to consider when selecting a discounted Web hosting company.
- They are hosting hundreds or even thousands of domains on the same server.
- They throttle your bandwidth to your site during peak hours.
- They are located in a third-world country.
- They are using very old servers.
- They experience a lot of downtime due to poor Web server maintenance.
- They may not have 24-hour telephone support.
- They lack proper server backups in case of server failure.
- They host spammers on the server, which can get IP addresses banned from sending email to those using blocking programs to protect against servers that send spam. Therefore, your emails may not get through.
Also consider these results of a poor Web hosting:If your website loads slowly during peak hours, many dial up users will hit the back button and go elsewhere for their purchases. How much do lost sales due to slow load time cost your business?
If your website goes down for a day and there is no one to call, how much does a day of lost sales cost your business?
If your discount server lost your site completely, do you have a current database backup of all customers and their orders? How easily can you reload your website and the database if that happened?
Needless to say, saving a little money on Web hosting may not be worth the repercussions.
One easy way to check the load time of two different hosting companies is to download a test 100 Megabyte file several times on each sever to measure the difference in download time. To better amplify the test you may want to try it with a dial up connection.
Read full article at websitemagazine.com