I keep seeing people and clients looking for hosting by price.
They say "look! fiffihosting.org offers a gig of space and a jillion emails for $2 a year!"
and "poopyhost.com will pay you to host with them!"

I've given in to more then one design client wanting me to switch them for a better monthly price. The $10 a month they saved did not make up for the $80/hr they lost when things went wrong.

If you design or develop- guys, we have a responsibility to stop this price madness.

Finding a host by price ..
That's retarded. Buying cheap hosting will get you -> cheap hosting.
I work for the man doing design and development. And I deal with a lot of freaking clients to redo their sh*t and clean it, move it for disgruntality, etc.
Anybody who suggest a web host because of price doesn't know the industry.

These cheappos will often charge you extra for things standard on any decent host. $4 for a database setup, $12 for ssh access (haha, as if). extra for streaming - no ssl certificate to borrow.. ouch

I'm finally at a point in my career where i can simply tell a client where they host. if they show me their shopping notes and any of them are under $15 a month I b***h slap them and tell them to sit in the corner.
I'm being harsh. Seriously speaking though- if there's more then design- if there's *development* involved, the host will run at least $15 a month. Yes and linux and ssh and vim.. etc etc.

Space is kind of a dumb way to look for hosting too. Unless you are selling media, photography, music.. if you need a big ass site by k, what you really need is a new designer or developer.

Give me one real member of the design and development community who swears by some $4 a month host, and i'll show you a poser scammy spammy cretin who doesn't care about the health of the industry.

Amen...

The truth of the matter is, you have some hosts like yours truly that offers small amounts of space and bandwidht very cheap.. Now our "decent" hosting package for businesses is upwards of 15-20 dollars per month, and offers decent features.

Agreed. You would't choose a doctor based on lowest price or a mechanic, would you? Going to a free clinic is not the same as going to an experienced physician.

Hosting is a service. Finding a hosting company with superior service should be the bottom line and not price in deciding who to go with.

Will my host genuinely care about me and my website? Do I want support with a personal touch or do I want to be merely a support ticket number? Does my host understand how to troubleshoot support issues in a timely manner? Will my website be online nearly 100% of the time or do I have to worry about frequent outages?

These are just some of the questions to ask yourself before deciding on who is best for you.

Thanks,
Anthony

I agree, quality is much more important than quantity. Pricing IMHO should not be of first concerns. Reliability and support should.