Affordable Web Hosting for Web Designers
Let's be blunt. In this day and age, you really need to have a website if you plan on making your mark in the design world. Without an online presence, you'll be considered out of touch and not relevent in today's market. Whether you are presenting a portfolio or work samples related to print, video, illustration, or 3D, you're going to need an online presence to allow potential employers, colleagues and so on to sample your work from where ever they are.
Below are some web hosting companies that will give you the space, tools and bandwidth you need to put up a website that will stand up to needs of a graphic designer. Whether you are putting up video samples, demo reels, website previews or flash media, these hosting solutions will do the trick and more.
Company |
Price Per Month |
Space |
Transfer Per Month |
Support |
Host Gator |
$3.96 |
Unlimited |
Unlimited |
24/7 Suppor |
iPowerWeb.com |
$5.95 |
Unlimited |
Unlimited |
24/7 Support |
PowWeb Hosting |
$4.88 |
Unlimited |
Unlimited |
24/7 Support |
StartLogic |
$7.50 |
2000 MB |
60 GB |
24/7 Quality Support |
There are a variety of Web Hosting Services out there, but once you understand a bit of the basics, it becomes easier to find the one right for your business.
What to look for in Web Hosting Services...
1) Dependability (Uptime)
What's the point of having a website if there are needless downtimes. A good hosting solution will have (and claim) an uptime percentage of at least 98-99%. Make sure that they mention this somewhere. If they have a good record for uptime, then they will mention it for sure. Also see if they do daily backups to secure your data. The companies below are known to be quite reliable.
2) Space (How much storage space per account)
The thing about most websites is that they constantly evolve and grow. Invest in a business web host that will give you plenty of headroom for growth. And with such affordable web hosting out there offering loads of space, don't go for something cheaper. You should really be aiming for 500mb and up.
3) Bandwidth Transfer per month
This is also something you really need to look at. This basically means "how many visitors can access your site in a month. The higher the number (measured in GBs), the better. Again, go for some head room and get yourself a plan that offers at least 10GB of transfers per month. If you plan on having video or a demo reel of some kind aim higher yet.
4) Support (Can you reach technical support easily and readily if you have any questions or issues?)
Setting up your website is pretty straight forward, but sometimes you just need a little help to get you in the right direction. See what they say about support. Do they have an online forum where you can ask questions? This can be quite helpful as well.
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