Where your site is hosted can make or break your success online. You need speed, security, and reliable support, but many hosting providers do not offer all three.
When you look up web hosting options, there are plenty of website hosts to choose from. Many hosts offer tremendously cheap prices. Of course, these cheap hosting plans might seem a good idea at first, but there’s a long list of issues related to them. Unfortunately, these cheap hosts usually perform poorly on nearly all aspects of server hosting, from server uptime and site speed optimization to customer support.
Using cheap hosts means you sacrifice many aspects of good hosting, including website speed and security. We got into each of the risks of cheap hosting below.
Poor Site Speed Optimization Negatively Impacts SEO & User Experience
Site speed metrics directly impact rankings -hosting and server response time directly impact how fast your site loads. You need a fast site, but not every hosting provider can achieve this. Many are too heavy and lack the speed optimization needed.
Site Speed is a Direct Ranking Factor
If you’re using a cheap host with limited resources, your site could slowly and/or have poor Web Vitals, which are the direct ranking factors connected to site speed. If your site metrics are bad, you could drop in the rankings.
For example, if your page has performance issues, any SEO rankings can plummet. Our HTTP/3 protocol and automatic image optimization features provide increased performance and guarantee no bottlenecks that increase loading time. This is paired with Speed-optimized sites for Web Vital metrics which is a direct ranking factor.
Poor User Experience
In addition to the negative impact of poor Web Vitals, slow loading websites provide a poor user experience. If your site doesn’t load quickly for users, they may get impatient and quickly return to the search results. This bounce back to the SERPs reduces users and site traffic. It also increases your site’s bounce rate, which is another direct ranking factor. High bounce rates due to slow loading can negatively impact your rankings.
We recommend staying updated on your page speed and Web Vitals. If you’re not sure about your page speed or Web Vitals, we offer a free video audit of your website, including site speed.
Shared Server Hosting & Limited Resources
The most major issue with cheap hosts is “shared server hosting.” This hosting method splits resources between sites to get as many sites as possible on a single server, which limits the resources of every website on the server.
Restricting the resources opens your website up to multiple issues. This may go even deeper to more memory limits on PHP, meaning you cannot run resource-intensive plugins. As a result, your website’s speed decreases beyond repair. The problem becomes greater when the host increases the number of websites it hosts from that server.
Shared Downtime
Shared server hosting ultimately means that if the server goes down due to one of the sites, all the sites in the server will go down with it. This is a major problem with many cheap hosting providers that offer shared server hosting. This shared downtime problem is also linked to improper security measures that cheap hosts provide, which make your site more vulnerable to security leaks and DDoS attacks. For example, if any of the websites hosted in a particular shared server experiences a DDoS attack and goes down, everyone in that database will also experience that downtime.
Our servers are compatible with all control panels and have built-in security measures both against DDoS and spam.
Overuse Notice
Because of limited resources, you might get an overuse notice from your provider if the site experiences traffic spikes, meaning they might charge you extra for using more resources than allowed and might even withhold your site’s data until you pay the fine. While this is an uncommon issue, it can heavily impact your website.
Security Issues
Site security is a constant threat. Your hosting must have the best security measures in place to ensure your site isn’t the victim of a malicious attack. But not every hosting provider focuses on security. Many hosts offer the bare minimum or basic security measures, which is not enough to protect your site from the every-evolving security attacks.
For example, many of these hosts don’t include SSL Certificates that prevent hackers from spying on very sensitive details. You must purchase this security certificate separately. They also could lack malware protection, making any information on your site an easy target for hackers.
Cheap hosts often lack the proper security measures, including:
- DDOS Protection – Eliminate the threat of hackers overloading your servers with an influx of traffic that can bring down your site.
- Brute Force Protection – Safeguard your site’s login information from hackers.
- Malware Protection
- SSL Certificates – Necessity in today’s digital age.
Because you’re sharing a server, you also open yourself up to security risks…
Shared Hosting Security Concerns
Security leaks become an even more significant issue when your website is being hosted alongside others. When you have a lot of websites running on the same database, if one of them gets attacked, all other sites become vulnerable. That means if another site on your server is impacted, you will be too.
Technical Issues
Security and speed won’t matter if your page isn’t running properly. Many technical aspects, such as upgrading hardware or updating software, are usually undermined or forgotten by cheap hosting providers. This can lead to your website going down or malfunctioning. Below are technical issues cheap hosts can cause:
No Backups
Loss of your Website Data
No Software Updates
Software is just as important as hardware. With new technology, software is updating and improving every day. This means that the hosting provider must continuously update the software for compatibility with the latest plugins and addons. In many cases, cheap hosts become outdated and their software may no longer support your website or limit the capabilities of creating your desired one.
Insufficient Storage Space
As your website grows, so will its need for more space. While cheaper hosts like GoDaddy and Bluehost allow you to upgrade your storage capacity, this also increases the cost of hosting. As your website grows, you will continually need to upgrade the storage in order to ensure enough space. However, our LiteSpeed Web Servers reduce resource load and increase server capacity through speed-optimized configuration and lightning fast CDN. This gives you more storage space without the need to pay for more.
IP Ban
Other Cheap Hosting Issues
In addition to the above issues, cheap hosts can also add other problems that increase time and money spent. While these issues are less critical to a properly functioning website, they are still important considerations when choosing where to host your website.
- Inexperienced Support – Many cheap hosting options don’t offer comprehensive support.
- High Renewal Prices – Once the first portion of the hosting plan ends and it’s time for renewal, you might not see the same price you paid at first. This is a strategy used by a lot of hosting providers that offer cheap hosting – their renewal price is much greater than the first offer.
- Other Hidden Costs – There might also be a lack of transparency between your provider and you regarding extra costs. They could be charged to restore backups, domain transfers, or resource overuse incidents. Many hosts can also charge for site migrations and SSL certificates. Be sure you’re clear on the costs before committing to a host.
Avoid the Risks with an All-in-One Host Solution
Your success is important to us and we know the impact high-quality hosting can make…
Hosting impacts user experience, page speed, rankings, and other aspects of your website. To avoid the risks of cheap hosts, you need a quality hosting solution that offers speed optimization, security, and support. That’s why we offer FREE speed-optimized hosting in our SEO packages! This is our own hosting that our developers have built from the ground up, which provides many benefits for your website.
Our alternative improves performance without investing in additional servers or resources. This lightweight alternative to hosting cuts resource loads by 50% and saves loading time with lightspeed cache, rendering 3rd party caching useless.
Protect Your Site with Advanced Security Features
Industry-leading security features are built-in to all hosting accounts to ensure your website is protected.
Faster Loading Times for Better Rankings & Results
With our hosting, you achieve shorter load times for a better user experience! Speed up your site’s loading time with our speed-optimized hosting. Our LiteSpeed Cache is an all-in-one site speed solution to:
- Quicker Load Times and Improved Web Vitals – Web Vitals are the metrics used as ranking factors. Our hosting will improve these metrics for better rankings.
- Handle more requests per second – Your site will be able to handle an influx of visitors without slowing down.
- Keep visitors on your site – Faster sites provide a better user experience. Customers don’t have to wait for your site to load and can quickly find info.
No Additional Fees
More Quickly Address Issues
Because we offer our own speed-optimized hosting, we can more quickly address any issues. If issues arise with your hosting, we do our best to assist, but third party hosting can be difficult if we don’t manage the hosting. This can cause hours of headaches for your team depending on what the issue is. You need a robust, yet hands-off experience for website hosting and site speed…
When using our hosting, we can address issues quicker and get your site back up and running because we have full access to your account. Instead of reaching out to your 3rd party hosting, we handle everything for you!
- Lighting fast website load speeds with advanced security and support.
- SSL certificates are included at no extra charge for optimal site security.
- Site migration is included free with your hosting for a worry-free experience.
- Fix issues quicker with in-house hosting.
- Fully Managed WordPress Hosting – All technical aspects of WordPress migration, updates, and hosting are handled by our professional developers. We manage security, speed, site uptime, theme and plugin updates, and more, all with 24/7 support!
If you’re interested in learning more about our SEO packages and included hosting, get a Free Video Audit of your website! We will analyze your page speed, user experience, rankings, and brand assets (website & Google listing) to show you the opportunities you have.
