Web Hosting Pricing

There has been a trend in pricing for web hosting services over the past couple years…it keeps getting cheaper by about $1/year over the last 5 years.

What happens when they bottom out on pricing? Well…this is exactly what we’re seeing right now in the industry.  The providers keep adding more features and more space. They have also been adding this and many other features for the last few years with the price decreases. We now see hosts with unlimited bandwidth and web space where you can host unlimited domain names.   HostMonster is a prime example.

More hosts are now doing away with the free domain name and making users pay for a cheap domain namelike Ipowerweb and PowWeb.  There are still some good hosts that include it all, but they are up around $5.95 per month versus the $4/month crowd that offers the domain name for about $15/year. So it’s pretty much a wash because with those $5.95 plans you also get a ton of features.

The biggest problem we have had over the years is that hosts keep trying to get you to pay for many years upfront. Then some have bad cancellation policies that don’t allow partial month or partial year refunds! Make sure you read all the fine print before you sign up for any web hosting plan. This will enable you to get a refund if you’re not satisfied with the plan you sign up for.

I was talking to a friend that just started a website about police equipment and he was saying that when he was looking at web hosting options he was lost when it came to all the features. He didn’t know what half of it meant and he chose one that had the most “unlimited” options. He almost started out with a free web hostingplan. But don’t be a victim of overselling…these hosts don’t always live up to their word. They can’t be providing you unlimited space. There is always some fine print about how if you have excessive usage or abuse the system you can be suspended for any reason. This happens quite often at ALL hosts. If you have extensive usage on disk and traffic you may want a VPS system.  Then the next step up is a dedicated server – this enables you to use as much as you want. Think about it logically – if you only have a 250GB harddrive in a server – how can they give you unlimited space? They can’t. You’ll end up losing your files and waste a lot of time trying to get reactivated because they usually have a zero tolerance to those who actually expect what they buy!

What’s the next move in web host pricing? Anybody’s guess…they have dropped the price to the best they can and they can’t give more than unlimited. So…the next year or two should be very interesting.  It’ll probably come down to who is more creative in the marketing and provide the best support.