How to Minimize Webhosting Costs
There are several ways you can minimize webhosting costs especially when traffic numbers are high. It’s advisable that bloggers should spend less than half of their income on webhosting, but it’s not always the case. To keep the costs to bare minimum, here are the things you should do:
- Use light WordPress Theme
A light WordPress Theme will ensure that your site does not over utilize resources. Heavy themes make sites to load slow, hence the use of more memory. At some point webhosting companies will send a message warning about resource usage. If you won’t chance the theme for a light one, you’ll be forced to buy dedicated server hosting services.
- Minimize the number of plugins
Another way to reduce webhosting costs is to minimize the number of plugins in your website. Some plugins make website loading slow and also increase bandwidth usage. Delete non-essential plugins and only remain with those you regularly use.
- Use optimized images
Some bloggers lift images from Google or Facebook and use them without optimization. Heavy images will certainly use more resources. To optimize images and ensure that they are light, you can use Snipping Tool or install a plugin called Smush on your website. The Smush plugin will summarily reduce the size of the images on your site hence reducing hosting charges by a significant margin.
- Pay for a longer period
Webhosting companies like Kinsta, Cloudways or Bluehost allow you to pay for hourly, monthly ,3 months or annually; you can also pay for 5 years. If you pay every hour, the cost of hosting will be high but if you pay for a longer period, say 2 years, the cost will be significantly low.
For Kinsta webhosting, when you pay for one year, the company gives you a discount of 2 months. Assuming that the monthly subscription is $30, for one year you’ll pay $300 instead of $360, thus saving $60.You can check Kinsta hosting plans here
- Subscribe to a webhosting company without hidden charges
Some webhosting companies, especially the cheap ones have hidden charges. You will be told that the cost of hosting is $100 per year but when you join them, more charges are levied against you. Before you decide to buy hosting plans, make sure you review each and every webhosting company being mentioned online.
You should pay the amount prescribed in the plan you have selected. It’s only when you exceed the resources allocated that you can pay extra.
I will select for you three webhosting companies to join and enjoy their services:
Kinsta(buy hosting here)
Bluehost(Buy hosting here)
Cloudways(buy hosting here)
- Disable comment section
If you don’t need comments, make sure you delete the comment section. Comments can even double the amount of bandwidth your blog uses. Alternatively, delete old comments.
In 2016 it happened that one of my websites had enabled comment section and I was spending up to $500 per month on webhosting. A friend advised me to disable the comment section and delete old comments. That month, I paid $50 less.