There are many factors to consider with cheap web hosting. At what point can one safely say they haven’t sacrificed quality for a better price? One might never be sure. On the other hand, high price is definitely no guarantee of quality. So this expose will focus on maintaining a balance and finding the best web hosting service available. For the sake of expediency, we will focus on five of the largest web hosting companies: Hostgator, Dreamhost, Lunarpages, 1&1 hosting, and Yahoo hosting.

First up, Yahoo web hosting. Yahoo is a relatively late entry to the hosting scene, using it’s large company status to lend itself some credibility. Why should that matter in the web hosting industry? Well, it surely does. The fact that they have other branches of service means that if any one branch reflects poorly on the company, it will hurt them all-around. So with that in mind, you can be sure they would not let their hosting division flop over in defeat. Yahoo hosting has an excellent up-time at 99.9%, which beats out much of the competition. Why does 99.9% matter so much more than 99%? One might not notice at first, but consider this: There are 365 days in a year. 99% uptime could mean that up to 3.5 days a year the site could be down! Being down for half a week is enough to seriously cut into the margins of many online businesses or dampen any other online pursuits. With Yahoo web hosting you can rest assured that won’t happen to you. Yahoo’s prices are quite low, and they offer competitive hard disk space and bandwidth.

Second to the plate, 1&1 hosting, the largest web hosting provider on the internet. One thing that stood out to me as a long-time 1&1 hosting user was the simple and comfortable interface. The 1and1 interface was by far the most friendly, however, one slight irritation I have as a Firefox user is that the login does seem to expire relatively fast, maybe every 15-20 minutes or so. So if you get lost in other internet tabs, and forget about it you’ll have to login again. That’s my only 1and1 complaint really. They had consistently low domain prices at $5 for years, only rising to $6 this 2008 which is to be expected with our inflation rates and ICANN’s current policies.

Next is Dreamhost. Dreamhost is a large web hosting service noted for their high-level of customer and community interaction. Dreamhost’s business practices maintain an amazing level of transparency and frank talk regarding any Dreamhost complaints. Dreamhost maintains a blog which much of it’s staff contributes to with many updates daily even on the status of their operations. Dreamhost plans are slightly more expensive but with their high level of respondency is a great bonus. Dreamhost also offers VPN access, unique IP’s, and other highly advanced features, at an added, but competitive, price of course. Dreamhost, as a mid-sized web hosting company had a billing issue this year as well as a power issue in 2006, however for their remarkable candidness they deserve atleast some respect. Few is the web hosting company to deal so honestly, and sometimes with a dose of humor on their blog, with their situations. That said, if your paranoid about your web business to the point where one error might set the spark to burn down the house, so to speak, then our next web host may be more for you.

Lunarpages is next up and surely one of the most reliable web hosting companies. Lunarpages has maintained great uptime, good customer service, and at one of the lower prices on the net. Lunarpages managed to stay online not only during the 2001 LA blackouts, but during the 2005 Los Angeles blackout that left half the city powerless. With such a tenacity and reliability, one wonders what it would take for them to not deliver their service, indeed! You can certainly count on LunarPages web hosting.

Lastly, but definitely not least, is Hostgator. There may be a slight bias here, as they are my preferred hosting company, however, this is not without reason. While I have tried dozens of web hosting services, and at any given time am using atleast three, Hostgator is the only one I have never considered abandoning. When all other web hosting companies failed to provide a solution to one of my problems, even some listed here, Hostgator prevailed. Hostgator has online support that instantly deals with your problems, and above all, does it well. Never before have I found customer support I can talk to online that could deal with such advanced and complex issues that I often contend with. Hostgator has one of the best hosting services around for sure. My only qualm is that they have no cheap domain registration mechanism within their service. However, one can find cheap domains elsewhere, and use Hostgator with no problems.

In summation, there are a number of factors to choose from when picking a web hosting company. All of the web hosting companies discussed offer good plans under the $10 a month threshhold.