Every business, whether big or small, wants and needs to have a website. This is because of the benefits that can be brought on board with the existence of a web presence. The internet is more pervasive than ever which means it holds a greater potential for businesses than ever before. People are spending increasing amounts of time on the web and the web is becoming more and more accessible. However, the concern is that for an online business, a web presence can become cumbersome since for them the pricing is always an issue. These businesses are perpetually low on cash so they cannot afford to spend too much on online marketing.For these businesses, it is important that discount hosting services be available so that they can have a web presence without too much cash outflow. However, while looking for the cheapest option, these businesses might be sacrificing a little too much and putting a lot at stake. They should keep a number of things in mind before choosing a small business web hosting service.One of the foremost things these businesses need to keep in mind is that they should not fall for any free hosting service. Some free web hosting services have a number of perils. Among these is the fact that many of these services place banners on the website’s homepage that may take up valuable real estate. After all, who would want ads being displayed on their site without any control while they themselves can place their own ads and make money themselves!Another thing that business owners need to understand is the difference between managed and shared web hosting. Managed web hosting has dedicated resources that automatically mean better quality of service for the website. The website will be up most of the time and can be given a number of emails and all such related services that the business may find necessary. After all, everyone can understand the benefits of dedicated resources. On the other hand, shared hosting means that same web hosting resources are being shared amongst a multitude of websites. Thus one can imagine that these websites must experience some downtime and definitely not the optimal performance.One might think that managed services would be more expensive than shared services due to the dedicated nature of the resources. However, even though this may be true, there are many services that offer managed web hosting services at discount prices.