Website hosting is an important part of your business. It’s a necessary expense that you want to limit as much as possible.
When you’re shopping for a new website host, you’ll see enticing discounts and cheap prices. That’s not the whole story of the web hosting costs, though.
There are a number of hidden costs that you’ll find out about the hard way. That will cost you time and money to make adjustments to your site.
Read on to find out the additional website hosting costs that no one tells you about until it’s too late.
1. Hosting Plan
The type of hosting plan that you choose is the biggest web hosting cost factor. The most common ones are shared, VPS, and dedicated.
Each plan has a different price point and purpose. They also have their share of pros and cons.
Shared Hosting
With this type of plan, you’re sharing space on the same server with a number of other websites. The advantage here is that you’re sharing the costs of that server. On the downside, you’re sharing the resources of that same server, which could slow down your website.
VPS
VPS is a virtual private server. It’s a step up from shared hosting because you have more control over the server space. A server is partitioned to create your own server. It costs more than shared hosting, but you’re allocated a certain amount of resources. That way, your site won’t be impacted by other accounts on the same server.
Dedicated Server
When you have a lot of traffic going to your site, it doesn’t make sense to share resources with other sites. You’ll need to get your own server.
That’s what a dedicated hosting plan does. You have an entire server all to yourself. These are also the most expensive plans because you’re taking on the costs of the server yourself.
2. Renewal Rate
When you choose a web hosting plan, you are usually given a highly discounted cost. That’s only for the first year.
You want to check to see what kind of discount you’re getting. It can be 50% or more, which means that you’ll be paying twice as much to renew for another year.
3. SSL Certificates
There are a lot of add-ons with your hosting plan. An SSL certificate is a necessary thing to have on your website. It’s what turns your site from http to https.
It creates a secure connection between your site and your visitors. It builds trust with those visitors. It’s also good for SEO since Google uses that as a ranking factor.
Some website hosts now offer SSL certificates for free through Let’s Encrypt. There are also plenty of hosts that still charge about $50 a year or more to purchase an SSL certificate.
4. Protect Your Identity
You may have purchased your domain name through your website hosting provider. When you buy a domain name, your details are sent to the main domain name database called WHOIS.
This database maintains all contact information for registered domain name owners. This database is publicly available, which means that you could be a target for hackers and spammers.
You can pay extra to have your name and contact information private.
5. Tech Support
Website hosts do offer tech support for their hosting plans. They draw a fine line between what is website tech support and what is hosting plan support.
You may find yourself in a situation where your website gets hacked. The host will pull your site offline to protect other accounts on the same server, but they won’t help you figure out how to fix your site.
They are likely to charge an extra fee because that’s considered to be development.
6. Traffic Increase
Your site’s success may be a hidden website hosting cost. With shared hosting plans, they’re usually good for a certain amount of traffic. If you see a spike in traffic, you may use up more bandwidth than you’re allowed to use.
You may have to upgrade to another plan or may extra fees.
Choosing a Website Foundation
Now that you know some of the added costs of website hosting, how can you begin to minimize those costs? You can start by choosing the right website platform and website host.
These two things form the foundation of your website. The platform is the backend on which the website is built. The website host contains the files of your website and serves them when users request them by entering your URL in their browser or clicking on a link.
Choose a Platform that Your Host Supports
Your website has a big impact on your host, too. Some website platforms and themes take up a lot of resources, and there are platforms website hosts don’t support.
For example, most website hosts support WordPress, but they may not support some popular themes because they are too big. If you’re committed to using a particular platform or theme, you want to make sure that your host supports them.
They may force you to upgrade your plan or change your theme altogether.
Bear Newman of Bearfoxmarketing.com says that when using a website platform to create your website, you should choose a service that won’t end up costing you more money and time in updates and fixes down the road.
Ask Questions
When you’re looking for website hosts, you should do a lot of research and ask a lot of questions. You can use these hidden costs as a guide to check and ask about.
You can also check reviews and testimonials from other website developers. They’re experts in the field and they can spot a good host.
Know the Entire Web Hosting Cost Before Signing Up
When you’re shopping for web hosts, you only see a big discount for your first year of hosting. You should ask prospective hosts to give you a complete picture of the website hosting cost before committing.
That includes the renewal rate, costs for SSL certificates, and any additional costs if you go over your bandwidth limit.
Are you ready for more tech articles? Check out the web development section of this site to learn how to build your website.
