My experience with the cheap web hosting companies is that what you save in dollars may cost you, or your website designer, in time. Let's talk about a couple of their top claims to fame:

Free scripts? Hmmm.... Define "free". With cheaper companies ($6/month and under), I have spent hours of my valuable time on the phone with their support center or wading through their support FAQs trying to get their "free" scripts to actually work. The scripts are "free" because they're open-source and available everywhere, but most cheap web hosting companies offer minimal support for them. They direct you to the website where the script came from and then it's Happy Troubleshooting! And don't even mention the time spent trying to get the "free" stuff to look professional enough for a business website -- if that's even possible.

Will Your Small Business Ever Use 1,000 Email Accounts? How about 10 GB of disk space? Or 50+ databases? For most small businesses with 200 employees or less, I've found the answer is: most likely not, even if your business doubles in size. Those email, disk space and database offerings are usually inflated by the cheap web hosting companies to give the appearance of value. In my experience, many small businesses never use more than a few MB of disk space unless theyre storing audio, video, large documents or hundreds of photos on their websites. And of the 40+ small business clients I've worked with in recent months, none have yet used more than 10 email addresses and they're unlikely to surpass 100 anytime soon. My point is, most likely there are other more immediate web hosting features you should look for.

What To Look For In a Web Hosting Company Its fine to shop around for a good price. But when researching web hosting companies, be sure to consider:

• availability and speediness of customer support (24/7 phone & email)
• choices in hosting platforms (Windows/ASP, Linux/PHP, etc.)
• choices in database platforms (Microsoft SQL, MySQL, etc.)
• availability of scripts youd actually want to use on your business website -- and I'm not talking about guestbooks, counters and clocks
• support for any free goodies
• your web designer/programmer's preferences - what's most familiar for them will usually save you money in terms of their time

Most of the above can easily be found for $9-12/month -- just a few dollars more than the cheap web hosting companies. You may pay more for databases, advanced stats or add-on applications so be sure to compare those costs as well.

Are There Any Pros to Cheap Web Hosting Companies? Yes. I've found that a couple of the big-name cheap hosting companies that have been around awhile seem to have their act together in terms of support and features that actually work the first time (so that you don't need support). If you're a do-it-yourselfer that will want to spend time tinkering with your business website, the cheap web hosting companies usually offer a nice Control Panel interface that will allow you to access everything easily. Down the road, when you need a more flexible hosting plan for a more full-featured business website, if you'll have the money to pay a web programmer to work around the cheap hosting company's limitations or you won't mind switching hosting companies, a cheap web hosting company could be a good way to save money in the short-term.

Bottom Line We're all smart business people here, right? So you know no one is in business to give you anything substantial for "free". And it's not that cheap is "bad" -- we all know there's a huge market demand for cheap -- but it always comes with limitations and trade-offs. Some trade-offs you can live with and others will eventually cost you. Just keep your business smarts about you and don't fall prey to all the cheap web hosting company hype.