the cheapest hosting?

[geordief]

what is the cheapest realistic hosting option with your own domain name?
I am with 34sp and they start at £3.95 a month (no problems with them over the past 10 years -very happy in fact).
As my priority is simply to get a decent ranking on the search engines (I can write my own keywords believe it or not) how cheap can I go before the site will actually suffer?

thanks

 

[mneylon]

Price isn't everything
If you're happy with your current provider, which you seem to be, stick with them.
You might find cheaper than the price you quoted and they might be ok, or they might be a nightmare

 

[seanpearse]

hostable do one for $2.99 p/m. their support etc. is pretty good but not sure if it'd be worth changing for the sake of a couple of quid if your happy enough with 34sp. Your site shouldn't suffer whatever your host company but you should remember if you are targeting a specific tld you should get the site hosted in the same country. e.g. if your target is google.ie you should try to get that site hosted in Ireland.

 

[geordief]

Does that apply (the need to be hosted by a server physically situated in Ireland ) if you go through the Geotargeting process in Google Webmaster Tools (I appreciate that would only apply to Google)

By the way , does "shared hosting" fare less well than using a dedicated server as regards ranking in the various search engines?

 

[mneylon]

Does that apply (the need to be hosted by a server physically situated in Ireland ) if you go through the Geotargeting process in Google Webmaster Tools (I appreciate that would only apply to Google)

I've heard mixed reports.

By the way , does "shared hosting" fare less well than using a dedicated server as regards ranking in the various search engines?

Generally speaking - no, but if your site is slow to load because the server it's on is slow etc., then it *might* make a difference
Rank can also be impacted (supposedly) by the number of sites on the same IP, but a lot of these are more theories than hard facts

 

[seanpearse]

Yeah I agree Blacknight and if I'm honest I'd say you're much more knowledgeable on this subject than I am. Although regarding server location, from personal experience i think having a site hosted by a server in the country you are targeting is a more sure fire way of maximising your ranking. (this obviously only applies to non tlds). I have heard that this has become a little less important than it was around a 12-18 months ago but I'm yet to be convinced of this.

 

[mneylon]

@seanpearse - the problem with a lot of this is that it's all theoretical

We had a client who was targetting the US market primarily, so we moved some of their servers to the US. In the end we ended up moving them back to Dublin as the performance worked out better overall!

@geordief - if your target market is in Ireland then it might be worth considering an Irish provider, but if you're happy with your current provider then don't move. You might not gain much and you could lose more