Web designers and website owners always look for two things when choosing a web hosting company: affordability combined with plenty of services. FatCow provides both of these in one compact little package that makes it one of the top 10 best web hosting companies on the Internet.

Affordability

FatCow offers one of the most affordable packages on the Internet. It costs just $3.67 a month to host your site with them. This low price requires a one or two year contract. There is no pricing penalty for choosing the shorter contract. The price covers a comprehensive plan and has no set-up fee.

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Comprehensive Plan

Often low-cost web hosting companies offer several plans. The low-cost option is short on features, but is enough to bring in traffic to the site. FatCow does not operate this way. For the same low price, ever customer gets the same package, with the exception of one upgrade that allows for slightly faster technical support. The package includes many features, some of the best of which are as follows:

•    Ability to add Front Page extensions to personalize the website
•    Google Site Search
•    Ability to accept online payments via PayPal
•    Script Barn
•    Shopping cart capability
•    MySQL databases to store customer information
•    Accepts a variety of languages: Python, Perl, PHP, Ruby on Rails
•    North American phone support 24/7
•    Online support 24/7
•    $75 free for AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing

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99.9% network uptime and an “anytime” guarantee make BlueHost a very reliable web hosting company.

If you have been in the business of creating and managing websites for long, you have probably experienced this scenario: You work long hours getting your website ready to go. After searching, you come across an affordable host that is offering some nice freebies. You upload your site, only to find that almost weekly the site is down for one reason or another.

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Soon your traffic drops, because customers stop coming to a site that they know is “always going to be down.” Your dreams for your website are lost because the host was not reliable. One way to keep from falling prey to this scenario is to host your website with BlueHost, one of the web’s most reliable web hosting companies.

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Watch out for hidden set-up fees, especially on short-term contracts

Website hosting services are typically not that expensive. For less than $5 a month, you can host your website on a secure, reliable, feature-packed server. What few know, however, is the actual cost of getting your site up and running can be quite a bit higher. That’s because some web hosting companies will charge you setup fees. These typically range between $40 and $60, which is a decent amount of money to pay just to get your site live. You can avoid this fee, however, if you know which companies to choose.

Compare Web Hosting Plans with No Set-up Fees

Many web hosting companies are now dropping the setup fee if you sign up for a long enough contract. They do this to ensure your loyalty over a few years, encouraging you to go for the longer contract rather than the month to month option. If you find a host that has enough features to carry your website few a couple of years of growth, this is a great option for you, because it saves you a lot of money at the outset, which is typically when you need to save money the most since your website has not yet begun to earn any for you. Here are a couple of hosts that offer free setup fees.

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