Newbies often wonder if they have to pay money to web hosting services. Can’t they do a better job at home?

While hosting your website yourself if definitely possible, it may not be cost-effective, to say the least. First of all, it will eat up into your time. Second, you won’t really save that much money. Third, you may not be able to supply a very reliable service for your clients.

If your intended business is dependent on you staying online and giving a connection that is both professional and high-quality, it would be best if you have a contract with a web hosting service instead. After all, can you really expect to be online 24/7 and give your visitors top quality speed with your home cable or DSL ISP?

Hosting your own website may actually be forbidden on some ISP’s, who will simply shut the website down. Furthermore, you will need to be more concerned with upload speed rather than the download speed which most internet surfers keep an eye on. Since the upload is usually about half of what you can expect from download speed, the information that you want to pass to your visitors will take a long time to send. In fact, you may find that they are leaving your website before the download is fully completed.

You’ll need a line called a “T-1,” which has a really high cost, in order to provide your visitors with the best upload speed possible.

So, compare these costs (and don’t forget your own time!) to what web hosting services are asking from you. These are usually quite minimal compared to what you would have to shell out to do it yourself and they’ll provide you with connections that are infinitely faster compared to a T1.

Plus, you’ll have someone looking over your site at all times. So, in the cases where it does crash, you’ll have a tech to repair it faster than you can yourself. And in a situation where time means money, you’ll need to get yourself back up in the quickest time possible.