Ever heard the saying Penny-wise and Dollar-foolish?

Well bargain priced website hosting may just represent the perfect example of watching a jar full of pennies while bucket loads of dollars fly out the window!

When I launched my first website way back in the dark ages of 1997 I paid almost $150 a month in hosting and data transfer charges.

My web host watched how many files I uploaded like a hawk and always seemed to send their hefty invoices earlier with each passing month.

Im obviously not the only one who felt that way, because suddenly a whole industry of bargain web hosts sprang up all over the web.

On the surface they all sound great, especially when you think you can go from $150 a month down to $4.95 a month!

Five bucks a month sounds great, until you realize the amount of data transfer (number of page views) and bandwidth (the amount of data transfer your host allows in a 24 hour period) you get for that low price severely limits your ability to do business.

This realization - along with a panic attack and a quick lesson in how data transfer and bandwidth get calculated - usually comes at the least convenient time.

When you exceed your limits, a bargain host usually just shuts you down with no warning.

Most webmasters realize theyve made a mistake by choosing a bargain host when their site suddenly gets shut down in the middle of a big promotion because of a traffic spike. Believe me, everything just stops!

Here are a few bargain hosts that provide good service, but you really need to really check the fine print for how much bandwidth they allow.

www.FeaturePrice.com

For $24.95 a month you get to host up to six independent websites with a single account. You get unlimited data storage, unlimited email and a variety of other higher end services, but their bandwidth policy seems hard to understand.

www.HostSave.com

Host Save is another low price hosting company that delivers a wide range of services for only $6.95 per month. They recently raised their allowable data transfer, but their policy on how much bandwidth you can use at a given time seems non-existent.

www.DotEasy.com

For $25 DotEasy offers a domain name purchase along with one years hosting. Sounds incredible until you read the fine print to discover they limit you to 1 Gigabyte of data transfer a month. Not much data once you start getting reasonable site traffic.

The moral here? Either be prepared to have your business shut down mid-stream if you get successful, or pay a few extra bucks each month to ensure you have enough bandwidth and data transfer.

At a minimum, specifically ask and read the fine print about the hosts bandwidth and data transfer policies before its too late!

Jim Edwards - All Rights reserved - http://www.thenetreporter.com