If you are just starting out with your website, and are like the majority, money is not easy to come by. You have probably sacrificed far more than you ever imagined you would have to, in order to create the best site you can. Having done that, you now need to get it hosted.  And this will cost you money – perhaps more than you anticipated. But don’t lose heart, there is a way out.
Over the last few years, the growth of web hosting companies has ensured that prices have come down and are today, at fairly affordable levels. However, there is a huge range of options available, both in range of service and price. Overall, there are three types of web hosting services and each has its own deals that you need to look out for.

Free website hosting - When you buy your domain name, you will often find that the agency you bought it from is willing to host your website for free. Sounds too good to be true? In a way, it is and in a way its not. Yes, once you have paid for your domain name, you need pay nothing more for your site to be hosted. But the company has to earn revenue somewhere and the way they do it, is to sell advertising space on the websites they host. The problem here is that visitors to your site may be turned off by the ads that keep appearing – we all know how irritating that can be. Driving away visitors is not something that you want to be doing. And the space will be limited as will the type of support you will receive from the company. But, if you are just starting out and have little or no money to pay for web hosting, this is better than nothing. However, never look upon free web hosting as anything more that a short term deal that will carry you (with the ads) until you can afford to pay for web hosting.

Shared web hosting - A better deal and one that is reasonable in terms of cost is to go in for shared web hosting. Many companies will place a lot of small sites on one server and the cost is divided between these sites, so each one pays only a little. With this kind of deal you will get better service and reliability, although your space will still be limited and the domain name you get will incorporate the company’s name – there’s no choice since you don’t have a server of your own. This is okay if you plan to stay small or as a step upwards from the free web hosting, until you can afford to pay for a full hosting service.

Dedicated web hosting - under this deal you will be paying based on the amount of server space you need. You will have control panel access to manage your site and full support from the web hosting company. This is the most expensive of all the web hosting deals but offers the best service and reliability. Getting to this level of operation may not be viable when you are starting out, but reaching here should be your aim.

Within these segments there are a lot of variations in regard to service, features and cost which vary from web host to web host. Spend some time checking out and comparing the deals available to find the best one for you.  Remember that while price is important, so too are reliability and support.

There may well come a time when as a webmaster you find that your current web hosting service provider just is not meeting your needs. Maybe they have failed to provide the standard of customer service you expect, simply don’t offer enough bandwidth or storage for your site, or maybe they just aren’t offering the most competitive price for hosting. Whatever the reason for wanting to change your web hosting company, you may be nervous about how difficult switching from one provider to another may be. Don’t let that keep you with an unsatisfactory web host. Here a are a few hints to help make this transition as smooth as it can be.
The biggest thing you can do to make this switch as hassle free as possible for both you and for the visitors to your website is to leave your account with your existing provider open. This allows people hunting for your page to always find your site, with no real down time during the transition. As you are evaluating different web hosts, make sure that you know that your new web hosting service and web hosting service package combination that you select will provide you with a minimum of the same level of features and services that your old company provided. After carefully choosing a new web hosting service, but while your current account remains active, you will need to establish a new account with your new web hosting provider.

After choosing your package and creating the new account, you will need to download all of the data files that are associated with your website from the old web hosting service’s server, and upload the data to the server belonging to your new cheap web hosting service provider. This can be a simple task, despite sounding complicated. One of the easiest ways to transfer these files is to first connect to your old web host’s FTP, and then connect to the FTP of the new host, and directly transfer the data. You will still need to leave your old account active at this point, and will want to make sure to maintain the same email addresses, to ensure you receive all of the email sent to your business.
The next step you will want to take is double checking that all of your files uploaded properly to the new server, and that any web links or media files on your website, such as photos, audio or video clips, remain operational. Once you have done this and are pleased with your results, the domain name servers can be changed. Your website’s domain name server is typically obtained when you create your account with your new web host.

You can usually expect the new web hosting servers to be up and running within twenty-four to forty-eight hours. This is the period of time where the benefit of leaving the account active with your old web domain hosting hosting service provider is the most evident. Instead of pulling up an error page during these switch over days, visitors to your site will continue to see the website uninterrupted on the old web host’s server. Once the new server has taken over the active hosting of your website, you can finally cancel your account with your old service. With just a bit of forethought, you can have a completely seamless transition.