Here's my story. I do run 3 forums and 2 of those are pretty active. First year when I had around 100 active users or less it was all find with low end shared hosting around. Forums were not earning any money so I didn't want to goto something expensive. But second year was kinda of disaster. Forum got way too bigger for cheap shared hosting accounts. Well at least for those cheap hosting packages you get for $1 per month. I was kicked out from 2 hosting providers. probably they were just having a reseller accounts since they did have cPanel. Someone with Cheap VPS wouldn't had able to afford it. My salvation came from Godaddy economy shared hosting package. That's till I ve found a good vps provider.
Forget about all the unlimited resources things. Try to chat with sales people of these before getting into these. Once you mention about having an active forum they will tell you their packages are not suited for you. Well might not the answer you want but it will save your time and little bit of money, maybe. Unlimited bandwidth and space really don't matter at all. CPU usage is the big problem. An active forum would have some big CPU load specially RAM usage etc. Also there will be so many sql connections would be open in same time which might be little hard for a small provider using reseller account. You won't get far with this. That would be the end of cheap shared hosting for you. I have seen people had to shut down forums because they can't afford to move to a bigger hosting package. Without finding couple of sponsors your forum will be doomed unless you are willing to pay from your pocket.
Because moving to an VPS (which is the best choice for a forum ) There could be one another stop. There are several Cheap Shared Hosting choice you can give a try. Well not exactly cheap shared hosting since these cost you around $5 per month. I'm talking about big Hosting companies like Godaddy and Hostgator. They do offer small shared hosting packages with loads of resources. They tend to let you run an active forum on their low-budget packages for a while since they can sustain it. But this won't be for ever. Once you started having active member base your only good option is an VPS. Sooner or later you will need one. There's no other way. There aren't everlasting Cheap Shared Hosting For a Forum. At least not for an active one.
So you need to start looking around for Cheap VPS provider. WHT forum is a good place to start. They do have offers section where providers post their special offers.You can find an cheap VPS under $10 but it will be an un-manage VPS. It means you will have to take care of all technical stuff. No cPanel you will to install one of those Free Hosting Panels by your self. So my advice is start this Cheap VPS hunt while you are still on your shared hosting account. Get one and start studying how to install and manage VPS. You can find all details and tutorials around internet and simple Google search will give you most of your answers. There are managed VPS packages but those start from $20 or above. But they would take care of everything and you will feel like you are on a shared hosting account but with more power.
All these things need money. When you are an owner of forum or several forums you need to start thinking about revenue from early stage of your forum. Unlike other sites a forum will need more resources soon if member base get bigger. Also it's really hard to earn money from PPC and Affiliate networks when it comes to web forums. You might need to find banner sponsors or those who willing to buy ad space form your site. So you can see running a forum long term is not a cheap task. You need have a soild plan from start. You probably need a Paypal account to receive money from sponsors and if you live in a country where Paypal doesn't allow you to receive money then you need some one else who can do it for you. Hard yes but all these things can be done. You will just a clear plan.
Forget about all the unlimited resources things. Try to chat with sales people of these before getting into these. Once you mention about having an active forum they will tell you their packages are not suited for you. Well might not the answer you want but it will save your time and little bit of money, maybe. Unlimited bandwidth and space really don't matter at all. CPU usage is the big problem. An active forum would have some big CPU load specially RAM usage etc. Also there will be so many sql connections would be open in same time which might be little hard for a small provider using reseller account. You won't get far with this. That would be the end of cheap shared hosting for you. I have seen people had to shut down forums because they can't afford to move to a bigger hosting package. Without finding couple of sponsors your forum will be doomed unless you are willing to pay from your pocket.
Because moving to an VPS (which is the best choice for a forum ) There could be one another stop. There are several Cheap Shared Hosting choice you can give a try. Well not exactly cheap shared hosting since these cost you around $5 per month. I'm talking about big Hosting companies like Godaddy and Hostgator. They do offer small shared hosting packages with loads of resources. They tend to let you run an active forum on their low-budget packages for a while since they can sustain it. But this won't be for ever. Once you started having active member base your only good option is an VPS. Sooner or later you will need one. There's no other way. There aren't everlasting Cheap Shared Hosting For a Forum. At least not for an active one.
So you need to start looking around for Cheap VPS provider. WHT forum is a good place to start. They do have offers section where providers post their special offers.You can find an cheap VPS under $10 but it will be an un-manage VPS. It means you will have to take care of all technical stuff. No cPanel you will to install one of those Free Hosting Panels by your self. So my advice is start this Cheap VPS hunt while you are still on your shared hosting account. Get one and start studying how to install and manage VPS. You can find all details and tutorials around internet and simple Google search will give you most of your answers. There are managed VPS packages but those start from $20 or above. But they would take care of everything and you will feel like you are on a shared hosting account but with more power.
All these things need money. When you are an owner of forum or several forums you need to start thinking about revenue from early stage of your forum. Unlike other sites a forum will need more resources soon if member base get bigger. Also it's really hard to earn money from PPC and Affiliate networks when it comes to web forums. You might need to find banner sponsors or those who willing to buy ad space form your site. So you can see running a forum long term is not a cheap task. You need have a soild plan from start. You probably need a Paypal account to receive money from sponsors and if you live in a country where Paypal doesn't allow you to receive money then you need some one else who can do it for you. Hard yes but all these things can be done. You will just a clear plan.
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