The first rule of real estate is “Location! Location! Location!” Where you build can have an impact on your budget, your security, even your future.

For a website, the “location” is the hosting company and service package you choose to go with. As in most things in life, you get what you pay for. While cheap hosting can get you by for a while, and it might even be okay for a “storage shed” of a website, but when your “home” is important to you, you’ll want to have it in a location where it will be safe from the bad guys (as much as possible) and “insured” against the worst. Translated, that means security and backups.

You can choose to manage security and backups yourself, but be prepared to invest time for learning, keeping up, and doing the actual tasks, plus probably a little bit of money as well. Or you can pay someone to take this responsibility off your shoulders.

Which direction you go can depend on how important your site is to you, how much time you have available to deal with it, or how much money you have in the budget. But like homeowner’s insurance, this isn’t an area to skimp on and should be the first thing added to and the last thing cut from the budget.

straightTALK: When it comes to website hosting, you get what you pay for. Set your expectations accordingly.