When looking for a hosting service, besides reliability, reducing your overall costs over a period of time is something you should think about. In order to reduce your expenses there are several things to consider before signing up with a provider. For the purposes of this article, I am going to focus on hosting providers with shared hosting plans as they are suitable for home business people and small businesses.

Here are just a few tips to help you on your way:

-Multiple Domains
One of your first considerations is to notice your own plan. If you intend to build multiple websites for AdSense, you need to check how many domain names are allowed in the hosting package you are considering. Multiple Domain Hosting allows you to host multiple websites without having to open a separate account for each domain. But keep in mind that some providers place limits on these. They allow you to host several domains under one account as long as the number of domains hosted no more than five, for example.

-Additional Features
There are providers that offer a hosting service plus some additional facilities such as a sequential autoresponder service and a website builder. Unfortunately very often the price offered is as high as the price for using a virtual dedicated hosting. Everytime you meet a hosting plan like that, try to calculate the overal costs you will have to pay if you use similar facilities provided by other companies. For instance you may consider to use the autoresponder service provided by GetResponse.

-Supports
Make sure that the support is included in the cost of the hosting plan. There is no use in choosing a provider that put extra charges for setting up your new account or upgrading. Some web hosts charge extra fees at start up to put FrontPage on your site. If you use FrontPage, look for one that does not. Read the company's TOS carefully.

-Overuse
Before contracting with any web host know what they charge for overuse as normally web hosts charge for extra bandwidth and disk space. To ensure access to your site is always available without having to spend extra money, choose a provider that provides large bandwidth and disk space.

-Money Making Programs
Don't fall for this one. There are hosting companies that offer money making programs in order to attract customers. While these may be beneficial for you in the future, they can prevent you from thinking logically. What I mean here is don't put the programs as your priority in order to get a reliable hosting service with the best price.

The last thing you should remember is that high cost does not always mean high quality because there is a competitive market for web hosting. On the other hand It has been seen many times that a consumer signs up for the least expensive provider putting himself in many technical difficulties and in the end he/she may have to decide on changing his web hosting provider. As any other things in this life, very often the answer lies in the middle. In other words choose the one that offers normal price for what are being offered. Research and explore what hosts will work best for you. You will find that you can shave costs in this market without shaving quality.

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Heris Yunora is the owner of unlimitedhostingplan.com, a site that provides tips in choosing and utilizing a reliable hosting provider that allows you to host unlimited domains under one hosting account.