How to create your own website for under $5
Learn the simple steps to create your own full fledged website without learning any programming languages or any technical details required to run a regular website.
Every blogger dreams of having a website of his own but the cost of web hosting and the technical know how required to keep the website alive makes most bloggers to switch to third party shared hosting services provided by companies like Hostgator, GoDaddy and Bluehost.
These shared hosting services are the worst services that I have ever used in my life and in fact they were a nightmare that came true for me. They charge you between 500-1000 Indian Rupees per month and provide you the worst customer service and web hosting that you can imagine. The websites hosted with them won't display contents properly and sometimes they keep on loading the contents for ever!
So what is the solution to these problems?
The truth is there is no shared hosting provider who will allow you unmetered bandwidth and unmetered traffic because it is not possible for any business to do so. What we can do is go for a VPS hosting or a dedicated hosting which will provide us with good traffic and bandwidth. But it is not practical for everyone to go for a VPS or dedicated hosting because they are costly and need technical knowledge to run.Beginner / Moderate Blogger
If you are a beginner or moderate blogger the best option is to go for blogging services like Google Blogger or Tumblr that are very easy to use and don't require any technical knowledge to run. These services will also allow you to use your own custom domain and custom theme.
You can create your own website for under $5 with services like Blogger and Tumblr. All you need is a custom domain which you can get for under $5 from domain registrars like BigRock and GoDaddy. Type keywords like ".com domain" , "domain", "BigRock" etc in Google and you will see ads for domains under $5 which you can use to register for new .com domains under $5 and use them on your Blogger or Tumblr blog.
Advanced Blogger
If you are an advanced blogger who can understand technical details required to host a website then the best option is to go for VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting services. Service providers like Linode, Digital Ocean, Vultr provide cloud hosting services from $5 to $10 which is enough for most bloggers and you have the option to switch to a higher plan if your website traffic increases or if you think you need more resources. The advantage of cloud hosting services is that you can always expand your resources without moving to a new server and making changes to your existing website or blog.
Digital Ocean has plans starting from $5 and same is the case with Vultr. They both allow hourly billing of resources as well. Linode has plans starting from $10 and also allows hourly billing of the resources. The best in my opinion is Vultr because it allows you to use your own OS image to install on the server rather than the stock image provided by the hosting companies. If you have a licensed version of Microsoft Windows OS with you, then you can use it to install Windows on the server without providing additional license fees for using Windows on the server. If you are a Linux user then you can install your own version of Linux on the server if you have the direct URL for the Linux image.
Although blogging services like Blogger and Tumblr are free they have their limitations. Some of the limitations are no database access, limited plugin support etc. If you are looking for a more professional website then the best option is to use WordPress. You can use a VPS to host your own WordPress website or go for a managed WordPress hosting if you can't handle all those technical problems that you may face while installing WordPress on a VPS.
Also Recommend: Set up your own web server using WAMP Conclusion
Before concluding to a point let me tell you my story. I started out as a blogger by using the free service from Google and also my favorite "Blogger". After sometime like everyone I decided to make my website look more professional and switched to a shared hosting service from HostGator and installed WordPress on it. As I explained earlier, it was the worst service I used in my life as my WordPress websites didn't load correctly and sometimes took forever. After some research I decided to move to a cloud VPS service and used Vultr to host my WordPress website. It was a very good VPS hosting and
I liked their services and still like them. After few months, with WordPress hosting I started to experience plugin errors and sometimes wasn't able to access my website due to plugin incompatibility which I had to fix manually using FTP.
Finally I decided to switch back to Blogger to host my blogs because I never needed those plugins that I used on my WordPress blog. With Blogger it is easy to publish articles and there are no headaches to manage. But I still host my professional websites using WordPress on cloud hosting services like Vultr and Digital Ocean because these websites require the support of specific WordPress plugins to work properly.
Depending on your needs you can go for a VPS powered WordPress hosting or a simple Blogger blog.
