When is an introductory hosting package a good deal?

Determination of what your site requires depends on how much traffic your site gets and what features it requires for successful operation. If it is easy to manage and does not require a lot of memory and processor power, you do not need a powerful hosting service.

Bargain hosting plans are great for sites built to be:

• A business card presence online for an offline business
• Sites without an e-commerce component
• Sites that don’t expect sustained web traffic over short times

Sites like these are typically perfect for cheap hosting plans and can always scale to premium hosting plans as they grow into the need.

Is Cheap Hosting Right For You?

While introductory hosting plans tend to offer the most basic form of hosting you can find, the hosting plan that is right for you depends on the needs of the business.  You may not get as many features as the more expensive plans, but you will save money if those features aren’t needed.

A lot of people think that cheap web hosting equals bad quality and it can’t possibly compare with expensive web hosting providers, but the reality is that the best web hosting provider is really about what you need and what you want in a service. A cheap hosting plan could be what an IT expert would recommend.

What is the average cost for a cheap web host?

The average cost for cheap web hosting is around $7.00 per month. Web hosting companies are usually either monthly or yearly subscriptions, with annual typically being the most affordable option, which means you are paying around $84 per year for cheap web hosting.

What is the average web page size?

As you can see in the image above,  the basic plan is suitable for a single website with 50 GB of total storage ( 50,000 MB ).  In 2018, Pingdom published a study of the top 1000 Alexa websites and found that 2 MB was the avg page size. With an avg page size of 2 MB, you could build a website with 25,000 pages. Which brings us to the next question…

How many pages are ideal for a website?

The amount of webpages a site needs can greatly vary due to the type of wesbite. A business card site with a few services offered will likely need a small amount of pages to display their offerings. A coroprate or e-commerce site can differ drastically due to the amount of pages. Our personal preference is to build the pages needed to express your value proposition as efficiently as possible.

Examples of Ideal Web Pages Built for a Website by Type

• Personal Website- typically contains 4-10 pages
• Corporate website might have anywhere from 10-50 pages
• E-commerce website might have anywhere from 25-(unlimited) number of pages based on the number of products, services, and/or features.

I wouldn’t recommend a cheap hosting plan for a corporate website or large e-commerce site for 2 reasons:

1. E-commerce sites typically include a large amount of images which can cause sites to need more than 50,000 MB of storage, as well as the need for higher performance servers to keep the site speed fast so SEO and optimization efforts aren’t compromised.
2. Corporate websites usually indicate an established business that may be competing against large or long-standing competitors. These corporate sites will likely be engaging in search engine optimization practices where server speed and efficiency can be compromised on shared servers, or servers with older hard drive technology.

The good news is that unless you are a corporate business where saving isn’t a priority, or a large e-commerce site, a entry level hosting plan will likely work great to start and you can always scale your hosting needs with your growth.