Web hosting servers are the lifeline of every website. It should be up and running 24/7.
Dr. Chris Dayagdag
Choosing the right web hosting provider is a crucial decision for any business. It helps to determine how accessible your website will be to your customers. It will also provide scalability, security, value, and more.
Table of Content:
- Your Website’s Needs
- Server Reliability and Uptime
- Server Responsiveness and Speed
- Account Limitations be aware of Unlimited
- Server Location
- Subscription Period
- Refund Policy and Free Trial
- Website’s growth & Upgrade Options
- Difference between Sign-Up and Renewal Prices
- Website Backup Options
- Customer Support
- Security
- Control Panel
- Email Hosting
- Areas of specialization
- Compare Prices and check feedback online
Your blog or company website is likely your most important online asset. So, it’s important that you take the time to choose a secure and affordable hosting company.
Because there are many web hosting providers out there, it can be difficult to pick the right one. But, don’t worry! We are here to help you find the perfect match for your business.
This blog post will walk you through some of the most important considerations when selecting a web hosting provider. By the end, you’ll have a clearer idea of what features are most important to you in order to make an informed decision.
1. Your Site’s requirements
The first and foremost aspect of choosing the right web host is by understanding your website needs.
- Can your website gain huge traffic?
- Are you going to set up your personal blog?
- Is it an e-commerce website?
Keep the above points in your mind before signing up with a web hosting platform.
For beginners, going with the shared hosting plan can work. However, if you are a techie, you should choose a VPS or dedicated server to ensure that your work runs smoothly.
However, if you are inexperienced or don’t have time to manage, managed server hosting is the best choice for you.
Get a clear idea of your website’s needs and then pick a web host to build your website.
2. Server reliability and uptime
Uptime refers to the amount of time when your site is active online.
On average, 99.95% uptime is adequate, but you must web host with at least 99.99% uptime.
Unfortunately, not every web hosting platform will provide you with such quality. Hence, you should check their reliability by going through their policy carefully. And be aware of those guaranteeing 100% uptime.
Apart from the uptime, there are situations when your site faces downtime (inactivity). It can be a technical problem from your side or the server’s issue. Thus, make sure your hosting provider handles downtime effectively.
3. Server responsiveness and speed
Server responsiveness and speed are two of the primary components of core web vitals.
In order to have good SEO, the above two must be optimized to their best level.
An ideal web page should load within 2 seconds.
Ensure your prospective hosting provider is providing server speed close to that value.
This is because visitors lack the patience to stay on a page that takes time to load.
Consequently, it will affect the online reputation of your business.
4. Server Location
Don’t underestimate the server location. It’s also a crucial factor for maintaining your website speed.
If your server is not in your target audience’s location but in some other country, there can be a slight difference in the speed, or you’ll have to use a content delivery network to speed up loading time.
Suppose your target audience is in America but your site is India-based. In such conditions, speed will be affected.
It is advised to buy the server where your site’s users or target segment are located.
5. Be Aware of Account Limitations
Many times, website owners regret choosing a web host without proper research. And this happens because a wide number of hosting services claim unlimited bandwidth.
Unlimited bandwidth and storage is only pleasing to the ears. You have to be careful about trusting them.
Dive deeper into the policies of your prospective hosting company. It may come with certain limitations that are not mentioned in the basic plans.
6. Subscription Period
Some web hosting companies offer attractive discounts on long-term plans, only to disappoint when it comes time to renew.
So, choose a short-term subscription period and later on you can decide to continue or renew with an upgraded option.
7. Refund Policy & Free Trial
A good web hosting provider values your time, effort, and money. It won’t allow you to lose on every penny you spend.
Thus, many web hosting platforms out there offer a refund policy and a free trial to let you decide if it’s good or not.
If you are having trouble or you are feeling disappointed by their services, the free trial will protect you from money wastage.
A free trial is the best way to taste the quality of a web hosting platform and make an informed decision for your upcoming site.
8. Website Growth and Upgrade Options
If you are building a startup with the dream of growing it in the future, look for scalability.
It’s the secret to assessing the right hosting company for you.
Considering the future purpose and growth, your web hosting platform should offer an easy-to-upgrade subscription.
9. The Price Difference Between Sign-Up and Renewal
During sign up, the plan you choose might not renew at the same cost after expiry.
Yes, this is true with many web hosting platforms.
Note down the sign-up and renewal costs too, and consider them before choosing a hosting company.
10. The Website Backup Option
When it comes to website backups, it matters a lot. Every web hosting platform provides a different level of back-end services. But again, you have to take into account your website here. To choose the right one among them, you have to check the following things:
The Backup Cycle
- Startups or blog owners need a weekly backup cycle.
- eCommerce companies require daily backups due to the overflow of information, transactions, and purchases.
Back Retention Time
- Backup retention periods can be one month or more.
- Daily and weekly backups are required to keep at least one month of data.
- A monthly backup is required when you want to retain it within a year.
Automatic Backup
- The ability to perform automatic backups on a set schedule will relieve you of the burden of hosting management.
Manual Backup
- The best option for those who don’t backup their sites too often
Restore
- See what amount of time it will take to restore the backed up files?
- What will be the maintenance period while restoring the data?
- Is it possible to restore it yourself or will you need the assistance of a hosting provider?
Apart from all these, it’s a bonus when your hosting provider facilitates back-ups at other locations or cloud services.
11. Security
Security is something you can’t miss, even by mistake.
It’s an essential factor for your web hosting.
Your web hosting company has to value your security needs first in order to deliver quality services. Even a minor security breach can result in overall damage to your site and its reputation.
- If you want to enjoy a seamless hosting experience, choose a hosting company using the latest OS.
- It uses firewalls to protect the server from malicious attacks.
- Serving DDoS protection to reduce the possibility of DDoS attacks
- It also provides accessibility to third-party data protection services for your website.
12. Customer Support
What support is your hosting provider ready to provide?
- Does it give you 24 x 7 hours of chat availability and responses?
- Delivering responses and solutions quickly to fix your issue?
- Communicating clearly in your convenient language, etc.
These things are important from the customer’s point of view.
13. Control Panel
A majority of shared hosting services provide access to cPanel hosting. But, some hosting providers have Plesk as the primary control panel.
I like the former one more due to its intuitive dashboard and easy-to-use features.
When it’s about VPS and dedicated servers, it’s not the same case.
14. Email Hosting
If you have just stepped into the online world, email servers are significant too for site owners.
Some may want to build a contact form or get official mail from other companies.
Go through your web hosting features and see whether they have any email hosting plans, or if you have to get it from a third-party site.
It can also offer you the same at some additional cost.
I will say to select third-party email services like Mailchimp etc.
15. Specialization Areas
A web hosting platform can deal with multiple specializations or stay focused on one.
For example, a web host might only be known for providing shared hosting services.
- Some hosting providers are popular for WordPress content management systems.
- Some are good for the e-commerce industry.
Identify carefully what your website demands and see whether the hosting provider is able to help in meeting them.
16. Bonus: Compare prices and check feedback
- When you are seeking various web hosting plans, you need to choose a budget-friendly price.
- When you have shortlisted some of the best hosting platforms, it’s time to compare their prices.
- Look at what offers and features have been added to the plans.
- Along with that, don’t forget the feedback shared by the users.
- It will help you figure out the quality of the web host service.
- Check out some sites like trustpilot.com, mention, podium, power reviews, and many more.
FAQs
1. Can I run a site without hosting?
No, it’s not possible to run a website without hosting. A reliable web host is a must if you want to publish your site on the web and gain traffic.
2. Are self-hosted platforms good for you?
For someone who wants to start a blog as a hobby, self-hosted platforms can be a great choice. But, if you want to build a business or do blogging at a professional level, you should buy web hosting.
3. Do web hosting companies offer domain registration as well?
Yes, there are several web hosting platforms that provide you with domain registration services too.
4. How many types of hosting services are there?
While exploring a hosting platform, you will find reseller hosting services, dedicated hosting, shared hosting, managed hosting, cloud hosting, and VPN hosting.
Conclusion
When it comes to web hosting, there are many options out there. Weigh them up as per your needs and budget. However, if you’re not careful, you could end up paying too much. So make choices taking into account all the factors mentioned above.
We hope that this blog post helped you to learn more about web hosting options and how to choose the right one for you. If you liked this article and want to learn more about web hosting, please keep reading our blogs.
