I was talking to my dad a few weeks ago about website hosting options and after we hung up I thought this might be an interesting thing to write down.
He was asking about putting up a site for a business idea he has, and we were talking about the various options for hosting his site. I realized as I was talking to him that there are basically two kinds (well, three if you count free hosting services that give you tons of ads and junk you don’t want/need) of web hosting models out there. Prepaid and subscription.
Most everyone I know has heard of the subscription model, sign up and for only $9.95 ($14.95, $24.99, etc… you get the idea) a month you get all these wonderful sounding things!! But what I realized as I was talking to him was that many people probably do not really know how the prepaid internet hosting model works.
For the last 6 years or so I have been hosting this site (www.amosralston.com) on www.nearlyfreespeech.net, a pay-as-you-go hosting provider. It charges me a set rate for the data I have stored on the server (somewhere around 2¢ per day for this entire blog) and a set rate for the services I have running to support my blog (about 2¢ per day). Which means that I only pay about $20-30 a year for this site (including annual domain registration). It’s pretty cool.
I know it’s not for everyone, but for what I do this has been perfect. If you have any questions, let me know. I would love to chat with you about my experience and help you get started. It’s really straightforward if you aren’t afraid to learn some new things along the way. 😉