The internet has provided us with lots of investment opportunities. Now, you can even start an online business with as little as $2. We went out of our way to find the cheapest web hosting platforms and came up with several. However, the four companies listed in this review stuck out as the best at the price range.
- iPage Hosting
iPage is among the big web hosting companies on the internet. It gets a good proportion of the web hosting market because of its competitive prices and the high level of quality provided. The basic plan starts at $1.99 a month. This is a price that can be afforded by almost anyone who intends to invest some money in a business.
The most important features in this hosting plan are the unlimited disk space, scalable bandwidth, unlimited domain names, unlimited MySQL databases, in addition to a free domain for a year. After 12 months, you will need to pay $14.99 for the domain.
With the basic plan, you also get a simple website builder. This is designed for people with very little knowledge of programming and web development. You merely must drag and drop elements, and your site will be complete. That also takes away the need to employ a programmer to design and manage your website.
Your business is all about selling and getting paid. That is the only way your $1.99 investment will pay off. For this reason, the company offers lots of sales tools. The plan will also give you access to a free online store. The stores are integrated with PayPal for universal payment processing. Besides, the online store is installed in a single click. A number of different shopping carts can be integrated into the website, and these include Agora Cart, Open Cart, and Zen Cart.
On top of this, the service will give you analytics on your visitors and the site traffic you are receiving. With two data centres, you can expect your site to load at a fast speed.
- Bluehost
The basic Bluehost plan starts at just under $5. If you choose to pay for 36 months, the plan will only cost you $2.95 a month. Bluehost is a great option for entrepreneurs who intend to work on WordPress sites. The advantage of this company is that it allows you to scale your website as your revenue grows. Upgrading from the basic shared plan to a dedicated server or VPS is seamless.
The plan will allow you to host one site, and will give you 50GB of website space. The bandwidth is unmetered. You only can own a single domain, but can have multiple sub and parked domains. It will give you the capacity to run 5 parked domains also. These are domains that point back to your site. For instance, if you own example.com site, your parked domain could be something like example.net. Subdomains run within your site and can be as many as 25. An example is a blog within your website.
In case you make an error, you can revert your site to a previous version. This is because Bluehost backs up data daily.
- Hosting Source
Although this service is provided by a lesser known company, it can still give you a good chance to kick off your business. Their basic plan costs $1.99 and gives you all the essentials of a website. That includes the capacity to build your site with free tools. The package will allow you to host an unlimited number of domains on SSD drives.
Your purchase of the basic plan will also give you access to a free domain. Key features of the package are unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space, and optional dedicated IPs. With Hosting Source, you will also be able to run your site using cPanel and Plesk. Both are very easy to use, even for beginners. In case you experience challenges, the customer service representatives can be very helpful. The reps are available any time of day or night, so you don’t even need to employ programmers to design or manage your business site. The company backs up your data every day.
- Arch Hosting
The basic Arch Hosting plan starts at $1.99 per month. This will give you a site that would work well with low traffic. You will get 2 GB of SSD storage space on their SSD, and 500 GB of bandwidth. The plan will allow you to host a single domain. The service is praised for its consistently high uptime. If you are running a business, the last thing you would want is your site to go down. This will negatively affect your sales and traffic since people will lose trust in you. Arch Hosting helps to reduce this risk.
The key benefit of this plan is that you get 5 MySQL databases, 5 email accounts, and 5 FTP accounts. Even for a small business, customized emails can help make you appear trustworthy and professional. A customized email uses the domain name of your site as opposed to generic addresses like Gmail and Yahoo. With this plan, you will also get an automated software installer and DDoS Protection and Mitigation. In addition, they offer free SSL certificates to their customers.
Arch Hosting can set up your site within seconds. They also accept bitcoin payments.
Conclusion
The internet has made everything easier, from talking to friends and meeting with potential marriage partners. Thanks to the web, business has also never been easier to run. As we have noted, you can get started with less than $5. This can be your full investment, and can give you access to lots of free tools that will help your business grow. You can integrate shopping carts and payment options to the very cheap hosting plans and can upgrade the functionalities of your site as your business grows. With these plans, you can install your site in a single click. That even eliminates the cost of engaging programmers.