Thrifty Thursday Tip #4: Web Hosting on the Cheap

As your business grows, you'll find that you'll want more and more features with your web hosting. You'll need more bandwidth, reliability will become increasingly important, and so on. But when you're just starting out, especially as a bootstrap venture or solopreneur, there's no sense paying huge web hosting and domain fees that you just don't need.

If you're looking to establish just a very basic web presence -- mostly static pages, minimal customization to your design, etc. -- Microsoft Office Live Basics is pretty tough to beat. Microsoft rocked the low-end hosting world when they announced this service in 2006. For absolutely free (yes, really), you get:

• Free domain name and Web hosting
• Easy-to-use Web site design tools
• 500 MB of Web site storage space
• 25 company-branded e-mail accounts
• Web site reports

All with no advertising (just a small logo in the corner of your website). This is a great option for people new in business and wanting to get a basic web presence established, or even an existing locally-oriented business that hasn't created a web site yet. You don't have to know any HTML - just enter your text, upload your logo and other graphics, and you're done. You even get their small business accounting tool, Office Accounting Express 2007 as part of the deal.

Now, if you need a little more flexibility and can do your own web page design (or have a friend do it for you), you can get domain and hosting for around $20 a year. Don't overpay for this -- some places charge over $30 just for the domain. You shouldn't be paying more than about $10 a year for a domain, unless it includes hosting as part of the deal. And there are numerous places where you can get hosting for as little as $1 a month. It's pretty no-frills, but again, we're talking about getting started on the cheap. It's easy enough to upgrade at a later date as your needs grow. Or for a little more -- $4-$5 a month -- you can go with any of several well-known, high-reliability providers' basic hosting plans.

If you're thinking about becoming a web entrepreneur, making low-cost sites to promote affiliate programs, info-product sales, etc., you want to make sure that when you look for hosting, you look for "multi-domain hosting". $1 a month is great, but if you're planning on running 20, 30, 50 or more domains, you'll actually come out ahead paying for a bigger hosting package that supports unlimited or a very large number of domains. Most hosting companies requires you to set up a separate account for each domain, or charge a substantial add-on fee for each additional domain. Find a service that doesn't do this and you'll realize a substantial savings as you add more and more sites.

Just because you're on a tight budget doesn't mean you have to look cheap. The last thing in the world wide web you want is to be setting up a business site under someone else's domain or running advertising or any other content on the site other than your own. You don't have to spend a lot of money to get your own domain name and make your own identity online.

Related on About:

• How To Create and Host a Website (Your Domain, No Ads) For Around $20 a Year
• Cheap Domain Registration
• Best Budget Web Hosts