As a webmaster you are always looking to keep your hosting costs as low as possible. You want to find a cheap host but you also want to find a host that is reliable and that offer the service and functionality that you need for your sites.
Different types of sites require different functionality. These varying requirements can sometimes mean the features you need can end up being expensive. Certain types of sites such as web proxy sites, image hosts and streaming video sites can use a lot of bandwidth and some require a lot of processing power. Other types of sites such as those made up of a few flat HTML files will not need such a powerful server.
You first need to consider the types of sites you are looking to host. Are there going to be any special requirements for your sites such as databases, streaming video or server side programming languages such as PHP.
There are lot of hosts that provide many features as standard such as a control panel, MySQL databases, PHP, email addresses, add on domains and various single click install scripts. Other features usually vary with cost such as disk space and bandwidth.
If you want to find a cheaper host then you need to optimise your site requirements with what different web hosting companies provide. For example if you have a site with half a dozen pages containing some text and a few pictures then you are not going to have a very demanding site. You could get a basic hosting package with none of the bells and whistles to keep your cost down.
Usually webmasters have more than one site that needs to be hosted. With certain hosting packages you can host multiple websites which means you can save money on multiple hosting accounts and keep all your sites in one place. You can do this by using a reseller hosting account that allows you to host multiple separate sites on a single hosting account. These are usually hosting accounts that come with management software such as Web Hosting Manager. WHM usually makes a hosting account more expensive so if you do not need to keep each site completely separate you can instead get a hosting package that allows multiple add on domains. This will save you even more money as you will not need to have WHM, which the host has to pay for a license to use.
