How many times have you tried to hire a company to build your website, only to see that they want you to pay exorbitant fees to them in exchange for hosting your site after they build it? Don’t fall for this tactic. There are many web hosting companies out there, fighting for your business. Use the tips below to find the right one for your needs that fits into your budget.

You can almost always save money on your web hosting by paying in advance. Discounts for multi-month and yearly packages are common. However, you don’t want to lock in with an unreliable host. Try out a new host for a month or two before you lock in a long-term commitment, and check out the cancellation and refund policy beforehand.

Make sure any offers of “unlimited” data transfer are actually unlimited. Many web hosts advertise unlimited data transfer in their offers, but tuck exceptions in the terms and conditions for the package. Common exceptions include video or non-HTML file downloads being limited, limits on CPU utilization, and general prohibitions on using “too many resources.”

Before choosing your web host, you should always try calling their technical support and ask a few questions. If you can talk to a representative right away, this means their customer service is efficient. If you cannot talk to anyone at anytime of the day or night, you should look for another service.

Purchase a web hosting plan that offers you more disk space than you currently need. Anticipating this as your business grows is essential. At a minimum, you should get 20 percent more space than you need so that you can improve or add to your site in the future without running out of space.

You can choose to have multiple web hosting service providers if you would like in order to maintain IP address diversity. This is important to some people’s business to pad security and other reasons. There are several ways to do this, so if it is also your concern, look into using multiple web hosting services.

If you have been used to the same web host for several months, look at the availability of your website. An availability of 99% or more means your website is accessible all the time. If you notice a lower availability rate, look for a web host that does not encounter as many outages.

Before choosing a web hosting service, check to see their bandwidth capacity. This can be seen in terms of the amount of data that come into, or out of, your website. Depending on the plan you choose, you will usually be allotted a certain amount of bandwidth on a monthly basis. Large businesses could need as much as 200 GB or smaller ones could get by with as little as 3 GB. Check the availability, then choose your plan accordingly.

When in doubt, simply go online and do some price comparisons against the hosting price your web developer wants to charge. Chances are, you will find a better price for hosting elsewhere. Take advantage of the information here to help decide which web hosting company best fits your needs and saves you the most money.