Economic Downturn and Hosting

Today, I was discussing the hosting industry with some friends who operate a web host service.  It was decided that they were noticing a difference in signups in the last 2-3 months. Especially in October.

Why would web hosting companies see a difference? Probably because a lot of small businesses are cutting back as well as normal consumers opting for free web hosting instead of a cheap hosting plan.

At our company we run some websites that offer information on the industry and we’ve seen a slow down in signups as well, but the website traffic is nearly the same as the previous months. The only explanation for this is a cut in consumer spending.

A lot of hosting companies rely on a high growth curve to support large scale marketing efforts, but without a steady influx of new consumers they may have to start making cuts in support staff, marketing, or some may even go out of business.  Yahoo has already increased prices on domain renewals to try to generate more revenue through existing customers. 

One of the problems with putting all your sites on one shared hosting plan is that if your host decides to raise the rate – you are kind of stuck unless you spend a lot of time and maybe money to move your site to a new company/server.  A good idea to prevent this problem is to keep your data backed up and be ready to move if needed. After the .com bubble burst there were a number of web hosting companies that went out of business.

If you’re looking to cut down on costs for your hobby site – you could try 20fr.com – it has some of the best free hosting available.  It’s ad supported, but for a hobby site or family blog it’s a perfect starting tool that won’t break the bank.

We’ll keep you posted on how this recession is hitting the industry as we get info.

Free Web Hosting No Ads?

Free Web Hosting No Ads? Is it really possible? If you want to have reliable uptime and a solid web host…better think twice on this one.

Think about this logically… If someone offers you something for free – there has to be something in it for them.  But what could be in it for them…read on.

Usually, we find these offers from hosts on a xPanel or LayeredPanel software system.  These got popular for a while because you could start a free hosting company for the cost of the domain, shared hosting plan, and about $50-150 for the software.

Then they would offer you “free web hosting with no ads”. But in the signup process they would try to get you to upgrade by selling you a package through another web host – like HostGator.  These hosts would receive an affiliate fee from HostGator for the sale. 

The problem with this is – the affiliate fees are one time and not recurring so they would take quick money – spend it – not save enough to pay for a dedicated server. If you’re running a free hosting network – you usually need a server because you’ll crash every shared server you try!

So then they would go out of business and you’d have to move your site to a new free web host with no ads.  It’s a vicious cycle and most free hosts that have no ads go out of business within a year. 

Why do web hosts place ads on your site? They need revenue. Plain and simple. If they don’t have revenue they can’t pay for the server. Most free hosts have only one server and it’s a very small one at that. Then there are your mega free hosts. Like 20m or 150m Free Web Space. These host over 100k customers each on an array of servers for stability. They offer cheap upgrades to remove ads for as little as $2/month.

Why would you want to risk the downtime and losing files. If googlebot visits your site and it’s down -there go your search rankings. If you’re looking for stability – you might want to try Ipowerweb or BlueHost - either provide a cheap hosting plan and they are solid.

Bottom line. free web hosting no ads = bad idea.