I have wanted to talk about this topic for a long time, to discuss my experience with website hosting costs, from personal websites to now. I want to see if it provides any different insights to everyone.

I have been making personal websites since around 2006 until now. I have not spent much money on website hosting. Most of the time, I used hosting that was sponsored by friends, and occasionally I bought some hosting, but it was no more than 200-300 yuan. The total cost of domain name and hosting fees for all my websites in a year did not exceed 500 yuan. Because the cost of running a website is very low, it is not particularly difficult for me to recoup the costs.

Use virtual hosting as much as possible in the early stages of website development

Based on previous experience, a 300IIS ordinary hosting can fully support a daily traffic of 30,000 IP. At that time, through a friend's gold agent, the price was only about 200 yuan per year. However, I have seen some people who start website startups and rent an entire server in the early stages of website development. The cost of the server can reach tens of thousands of yuan per year, even if the website is not online yet, and it may take a long time to generate advertising revenue. Therefore, many people have a large initial investment, but the website cannot generate profits for a long time, eventually leading to failure.

I used a dynamic website program to create an information forum in the past, and when the daily IP reached a peak of over 20,000, it still ran very well on a virtual hosting. But the premise is that your website type does not consume a lot of CPU resources. Many friends may not understand what 300IIS means, it means it can support 300 simultaneous access requests. Generally, a website with 30,000 IP will rarely have a demand for 300 people to access simultaneously, so supporting over 20,000 IP is very easy.

If it is not necessary to have your own server to implement the website's functional features, I still recommend that everyone use relatively cheap virtual hosting in the early stages of website development. A general virtual hosting can easily handle a few thousand IP, and such hosting can be purchased for less than 300 yuan everywhere. If you rent a server, the cost per month is several hundred yuan.

The lowest cost of building a website

This paragraph is written for newcomers who have never built a website but want to build one themselves. Many friends who read my blog are new to the internet industry, some are even students. Some of them have no idea about how to build a website, let alone the cost of building one. Building a website is actually very simple, just three steps. Buy a domain name, buy hosting, then download a free website program online and upload it to the hosting to build a website.

Friends who have never built a website may think that building a website requires a high cost, but the cost of building a website can be very low. Now there are several larger hosting providers that offer promotions, with prices as low as 49 yuan per year or 88 yuan per year. My blog is very fast on such hosting. During the time when .cn domains were 1 yuan, building a blog like mine only cost a few yuan per year. Although the price of domain registration has increased now, the cost of domain name + hosting will not exceed 150 yuan, which is still very low. This cost is basically affordable for anyone who wants to build a website. At least it can satisfy a little vanity.

If you don't need to register with the government, hosting in Hong Kong will be even cheaper. If you operate your website well, the cost is only a little over 100 yuan per year, but the returns can be multiplied. There are more and more people writing blogs now, and in the future, it may be the era of everyone having a blog, where everyone writes blogs and everyone is a webmaster.

Try to buy hosting yourself instead of relying on sponsorship

Because I pursued zero cost investment when I started building websites, most of the hosting for my websites was sponsored by friends. My principle at the time was to avoid spending money if I could get sponsorship. But after all these years, I have gained new insights. Although sponsored hosting can save some money, saving this money is not always a good thing. Therefore, I have a new concept now, try to buy hosting yourself instead of relying on sponsorship.

Sponsored hosting is usually idle hosting from friends and is not maintained by dedicated personnel (if it is sponsored by an IDC, it will be better). Therefore, the probability of server problems is often higher than that of regular IDCs. Because it is sponsored by friendship, if there are occasional issues with the hosting, it is not easy to urge friends to deal with them immediately. In the past few years, I have used sponsored hosting, and almost none of them lasted more than a year. Most of them were used for a few months because the hosting often had problems, forcing me to find new hosting.

If it is an unimportant website, using sponsored hosting from friends is fine, as the website can withstand problems. But if it is an important website, it will be difficult to bear. The economic losses caused by this are far greater than the cost saved by using sponsored hosting.

Use a dedicated server in the later stages of website development to ensure website stability

In the beginning of the article, I suggested that everyone use cheap virtual hosting in the early stages of website development to reduce costs. If the website reaches the later stages, such as when the traffic is too high and virtual hosting can no longer handle it, or when the website has reached a certain stage of development and needs to develop new features that require server operation and setup, then consider renting or hosting a dedicated server.

Sometimes, sponsored hosting often has problems, and the server's bandwidth is limited, so users often report that the website loading speed is not fast. In order to provide a better user experience, for the first time ever, I rented a dedicated server to prepare for future development. Although the cost of website hosting has increased now, I believe that with the development of the website, there will be greater rewards compared to using virtual hosting. I will also be upgrading and adding new features in the near future, which requires my own server to facilitate configuration.

This is like making a venture investment. Generally, people who make venture investments do not invest in startups unless it is a very capable team. In most cases, they invest in projects that already have potential and market value. The same applies to investing in website servers. When the website has the potential to grow larger, increase investment.

Finally, I would like to thank the friends who sponsored hosting for me, regardless of whether there were problems during the usage. After all, it was their kindness. But based on my experience today, I would like to advise everyone that if you have the ability, try not to rely on sponsorship. Of course, if the website is just for fun and not for making a living, using free hosting sponsored by friends is also good.

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