There is no word that is perhaps as popular as “frugality” these days. Some may use “cost saving”, “austerity measures” or “cutbacks” – but we all agree it’s about stretching every single dollar until it squeals. As a business owner, you probably know every necessary precaution that needs be taken to ensure money isn’t wasted, even when it comes to your website.
Web hosting prices have been on a rapid and steady decline over the past few years. Today, you can find a decent hosting plan with some of the most prestigious hosting providers for a song, and if you can afford to pay more, you get the royal treatment.
But, cheap as it may be, what would happen if your hosting bill were larger than you expected? For the past few months there were boundaries that your bill would never surpass, and then one day you find yourself saddled with a bill you think couldn’t possibly be right. Before you reach that decision – that it isn’t right, i.e. – you need to take a few points into consideration:
Read the Contract Agreement
The first thing you need to do is dust off that contract agreement that you clicked the “I AGREE” button on. Yes, it is a pain to read and comprehend legalese, but you are going to have to go through it line by line – your other option is to hire a lawyer, but we don’t think it would really be worth it.
Read the fine print and then look if there are any “finer” prints. Some web hosting companies, like many businesses, will bury the devil in the details – fees, subscriptions or “simply because we want to”…
Did you ask for Help?
One thing many clients forget is that not all providers offer free customer support by telephone. It does make sense when taking into consideration that it can take days to get a reply on a raised ticket or a sent email – the phone is an instant connection. In case of emergency it is always good to know that you can call someone to get some help – but if it were only for free. Sadly, it isn’t always so.
Try to look back: did you call for support? Because if you did, you might have been seeking help that charged you by the minute – expensively.
Check your Traffic Performance
Ok, now this is a mixed-emotion moment: you’re paying extra money, but it is only because you had a sudden surge of traffic. If you’ve made a killing in conversion and sales, you probably won’t be worrying about the web hosting bill.
Still here? This means your traffic rushed to your site but didn’t achieve anything much. This is probably a good time to look into your website’s analysis data. Try to pinpoint why visitors would come and leave within seconds. Were they driven to your site artificially (there are websites and software that do it) and did it happen with your knowledge and/or consent? Is there a virus on your server? Is your site being targeted by spammers and/or hackers?
In case of the last two reasons (and assuming you have followed all their instructions and fulfilled your obligations), you would have a good leg to stand on against your web hosting provider, so sue them – again, if it is worth it.
The same rule applies if they are asking you to pay after you’d been promised “unlimited bandwidth.” Otherwise…
Check your Content
One thing that is surely going to exhaust your bandwidth allocation is your bulky, laggy and malformed content. If you have huge images (think BMP) they will do more harm than good – take them down and replace them with JPG, GIF or PNG files.
The same goes for other data formats – do you really need that audio/video file to load every time a page is refreshed? Isn’t there anywhere you can store it, where visitors can access it when and if they really want it? How many scripts, plug-ins and apps do you really need on your page? All of them? Really? Check again.
Do you really need to display documents in PDF format? What’s wrong with MS Office documents? Or even plain old HTML, for that matter?
If you look hard enough, you will certainly find something to throw out.
Check your Email
No, not your email … the email that is sitting around on your mail server. Most of us will ignore email that isn’t addressed to us or we might read junk email and not delete them. This eventually adds up and costs us.
If your host doesn’t already have it in place, use a spam filter. Delete emails and make sure you empty your “Deleted Items” folder each time you exit your email account. Create rules to automatically delete junk email that gets past your filters.
Every once in a while do some house cleaning: remove old emails you no longer need, delete those with large attachments and if you think you might require them at a later date, later back them up and store them offline.
This will save you space in your mailbox and/or mail server and it will also cut your bandwidth usage.
If despite all these steps, measure and precautions your bill is still too high – contact them. Just remember not to use the phone.
