There are basically four types of web hosting, and they are free hosting, shared or virtual hosting, dedicated hosting, and private on-site hosting. Free hosting allows you to set up your own website for free or at a minimum cost. While this can save you money, it does not provide the software options, database support, security, and technical support that are available with paid hosting. Many free web hosting offers require that ads be placed on your site for benefit of the provider. This type of hosting is recommended for small websites that do not have a lot of traffic, such as personal sites, family sites, or hobby sites. It is not suitable for professionals, commercial businesses or high traffic sites.

Shared or virtual servers provide the most popular type of hosting because it is affordable and provides the support and features you need the most. With this type of hosting, you are actually sharing a powerful server with many other websites. It is better than free hosting because it allows you to have your own domain name, and provides a variety of free software applications, database support, email support, multiple language features, as well as quality technical support. However, the security may not be the best. There will be many other sites on the server that can have an impact on your site. This is not a not a major concern however, shared hosting servers are professionally managed to eliminate sharing issues and problems caused by other sites on the server. Shared hosting is recommended for small businesses, professional service providers and other venues with average to moderately high traffic.

Dedicated hosting provides an entire server dedicated to your website. This means that you do not have to share server resources with any other website. This form of hosting is more expensive, and requires a higher degree of technical skills but offers a higher level of reliability and secure hosting. Dedicated hosting is the perfect type of hosting for large and high traffic sites, or sites that employ special software or have a requirement for extreme security. It offers excellent email solutions, database support, software support, and security, and allows you to have multiple domain names.

Private on-site hosting means that your web server(s) are positioned at a location which you or your company controls. It is rather similar to having your server in your own office, only that it is generally placed in a controlled computer environment. This type of hosting provides complete control by the owner and provides the best possible solution for bandwidth, up-time, security and flexibility. It has dedicated resources such as regulated backup power, protection against vandalism and fire, and more. However, this hosting solution is costly, and requires that your company IT staff control and operate the server for the benefit of the company. For very large corporations or businesses with dedicated services this is typically the most cost effective way of managing hosting services.

First of all, in order to know if cheap website hosting is what will work for you, you need to know if the disk space being given to you is adequate or not. For that you need to know the size of your website, if it has multiple pages, if you want to upload video files and music files. Is the bandwidth being provided by your cheap website hosting service is adequate to handle the kind of traffic your website attracts? If your website has a lot of traffic, then you may need to consider getting the services of a web host that is not cheap.

Another important factor to consider is if you need many email aliases. Cheap website hosts may have limitations of the amount of email accounts you need. Moreover cheap website hosting services may not be able to provide you with technical support that is top notch. Once you have checked out your needs, then you can make your choice.

There are many articles freely available online which tell you about the leading cheap web site hosting services. There are lists and then there are consumer reviews. Read the articles and also check the prices. The web host companies are listed as per their price, the service they provide and also the technical support they offer. The price varies; it can be anything between $4.90 and $19.90 per month. Cheap web hosting prices vary as per the facilities they provide. The disk space, the bandwidth, free set up etc.

There are many cheap website hosting services that offer unlimited space or unlimited band width. Beware of these schemes, as there is no such thing as “unlimited”. Most of these services have a catch. Do not fall prey to this marketing gimmick.

The top 10 cheap website hosting companies are: Fatcow, Pro Logic Hosting, Blue Host, Power Hosting, Pages Garden, Easy CGI, Yahoo Hosting, Gigabyte Package, Lunar Pages, iPower Web, and Dot5 Web Hosting. These companies offer cheap web hosting services. However, not all of them may meet your web hosting needs. You will need to read their packages, read customer testimonials, evaluate the services against what you require and then sign up with them.

Of course there are many companies that offer free web hosting services. You can research the free web hosting services too, although I don’t recommend free hosting services. Most free web hosting services come with strings attached.