Is It Worth It To Buy The Cheapest Hosting You Can Find

What are the most important things to look for in a hosting company?

Cost?
Network Speed?
Uptime?
Quality hardware?
Quality Support?
Fast Support?
Redundancy?

Most people would say all of above right? Well, if you had to stack each of the above in order of importance, where would you put cost at? Is it at the top for you or at the bottom? If I had to rate each of them it would look something like this:

Uptime
Network Speed and reliability
Redundancy of power, bandwidth, cooling
Reputable Tier 1 carriers of bandwidth
Quality Support
Fast Support
Quality hardware
Cost

The problem is that I see many people on WHT acting like Cost if the #1 factor in determining a host. And when you let cost be your #1 determining factor, you will be usually sacrificing on some or all of the other factors that you should be looking at. The higher up the list you put cost in deciding where to host, the more you will sacrifice quality in these other important areas.

"But", you say, "I see many quality companies offering cheap pricing. Shouldn't I choose to go with them?" Consider this, hosting companies like any other business need to be able to make a profit. Sale prices are great but there are reasons for sale prices and you need to consider these reasons when choosing to buy a cheap server. Some common reasons for selling servers for extremely cheap are;

- The hardware is used and old and the hosting company is just looking get something for it. ANYTHING!
- They have an excess of inventory for one reason or another that they need to get rid of.
- They buy their servers used on Ebay and can therefore afford to sell them cheap.
- The cheap server is merely a loss leader used to bring business in order to sell other products and services at full price but is not a regular price that you can expect from this company.
- The company is new and is looking to attract prospective clients on price alone and is dropping the price just to get their client base increased quickly.

There are companies selling servers on WHT who fall into each of these categories so you need to think about this when you make a decision for who to go with. The common denominator with the above list is simple... It is Unsustainable! Not one of the reasons listed above can be sustained for a long period of time.

If you can get a good deal on a server with a solid company, and there are many on WHT that are great companies who have great deals on servers at times, then that is wonderful. But do not expect that you will be able to get insanely cheap pricing on a regular basis from this company and don't be surprised when you want another server if the price is significantly higher. Every hosting company has certain costs that are unavoidable:

- Rent
- Power
- Bandwidth
- Payroll
- Employee Benefits
- Server Hardware Costs
- Software Licensing
- Marketing and Advertising
- Maintenance Contracts
- Network Equipment
- Infrastructure Replacement (a/c's, generators, UPS units, etc.)
- Other Utilities

The point in bringing all of this up is that if you plan on finding a hosting company that you can stay with for the long haul, you need to look at their regular pricing for retail servers and for reselling servers. Cheap prices are great, but no business can stay in business if they only offer cheap pricing. And if a hosting company is only attracting you by their cheap pricing, then it shows that they are most likely weak when it comes to the other essential factors mentioned above that need to be considered. Any hosting company selling servers for under $80 per month for instance is loosing money in some way. Eventually, the price will be raised to cover those costs (like at LT this year) and then you are left to make up that difference.

As with most things in life, good quality cannot be sold cheap, and that which is cheap is usually not good quality.