You probably don\”#8217;t believe that cheap web hosting can cure STD\”#8217;s, but it\”#8217;s true. I have incontrovertible evidence that proves it.

Sign up with cheap web hosting and several things can and usually do happen. First, and possibly the reason you opted for this web host initially is that you\”#8217;re not spending a whole lot of money to host your sites. This is good. This is what we hoped for. That\”#8217;s when they\”#8217;ve got you exactly where they want you.

It starts off innocently enough. I go to check on my site that I\”#8217;ve carefully crafted into a budding enterprise, and am mildly surprised to be met with an error message. I try again; maybe I mis-typed the URL. Again, I\”#8217;m met with the infamous 404. Okay, say I, I\”#8217;ll try a different browser; my computer\”#8217;s been acting up lately anyway but…no, that\”#8217;s not it. Now I\”#8217;m starting to get a wee bit concerned.

Of course this is late Friday afternoon, and so when I send an ?urgent? email to the support staff I begin to have this sinking feeling overwhelm me: this is the start of the weekend and my cheap web hosting support staff is in Cancun! I average several thousand unique visitors a day and the bulk of my sales over the weekends!

Not that weekend. When my erstwhile ?support? staff came back from their long weekend to be greeted by my 32 frantic emails, they finally canned a response that ?someone would be looking into my problem and get back to me within 24-48 hours?. Turns out they had ?migrated? sites from one server to another, and somehow (never made fully clear to me!) mine was lost in translation. Don\”#8217;t worry, they said, we\”#8217;re pretty sure we have a backup. Why did that not inspire confidence?

Longer story shorter, I didn\”#8217;t wait for them to ?find? my site. I canceled and moved on. (I had the site on my computer as well.) This is just one of the many calamities that can crop up in the wild, wild world of cheap web hosting. You may find scripts disabled, accounts canceled because of bogus spam complaints, your email account hijacked by real spammers because the host neglected to put in proper security measures, and on and on and on…

Bottom line is, most of the time you get what you pay for, though to be fair on occasion I have had some good cheap web hosting. The thing to remember is buyer beware, make backups, and spread the wealth to several hosts if you have more than a few income-producing sites. You don\”#8217;t want all your eggs broken by some lame basket!

Oh; you\”#8217;re probably still wondering just how cheap web hosting prevents STD\”#8217;s. Well, on the aforementioned weekend in question several friends and I were supposed to make a weekend out of it in Las Vegas. Needless to say, I had to stay home and fret over my web future, while they went off and one of them came home with…you get the picture. I\”#8217;m fairly certain had he stayed in town with me he\”#8217;d have had a different outcome!

The preceding message from Keith Thompson was a public service announcement. Save yourself time, money and possibly STD\”#8217;s by checking out out my Top 5 Cheap Web Hosting Providers