We all know that websites are important in this digital era. To expand your online brand you need to have a presence on the internet.
Websites can contain all sorts of information and it is an efficient way to communicate to customers and the audience. But you need web hosting if you want your words to be heard by people on the internet.
In this article, we will discuss how to choose a web hosting provider. This is the most important stage of starting a blog whether it is for a personal blog or to run a big e-commerce site.
There are many web hosting providers available for you to choose from. It can get overwhelming because the services they provide are on neck and neck. This is why we have curated 10 factors for you to conclude your decision without being overly critical.
10 Factors to Consider When Choosing the Best Web Hosting Service for your Website
After reading the factors written below in this article, you will be able to smartly analyze the things that you need in your web hosting provider.
1. Know Which Type of Hosting you Need
When selecting the right hosting for yourself, you need to keep a few things in mind.
Compare the reliability, traffic levels, uptime, price, and whether it is managed by WordPress. You can ignore the WordPress feature if you know about web developing through coding and are operating a high-level website.
Another thing to consider is the security support and the quality of support. You want your web hosting service to help you through every little server-related issue.
The performance is a critical part of selecting a web hosting. You would want your visitors to access your web pages as quickly as possible. Asses a full comparison of which web hosting has the best overall performance.
Check how well the control panel of web hosting is to know the user experience. Lastly, check the price and see which hosting is for your requirements without making a hole in your pocket.
If you are not familiar with the types of web hosting services that are available in the market then let me you a quick overview.
- Shared Hosting for newly established websites.
- Dedicated Hosting for high authority websites with tons of traffic.
- VPS Hosting for websites that needs an upgrade.
- Managed WordPress hosting for simple user experience and low maintenance.
- E-commerce hosting for running a dedicated E-commerce website.
2. Server Reliability and Uptime Guarantees
It is frustrating when you enter a website and the site takes a lot of time to load or does not even open.
This is the result of low reliability and poor uptime of the web hosting that website is running on.
From the perspective of that website owner, it costs the potential customers as well the value in organic search traffic. This results in your website ranking lower whenever someone uses the query to search for your topics.
This is why it is very important to choose a web hosting service that is reliable and has excellent uptime guarantees.
So when choosing a web hosting, make sure to choose an uptime number of 99% or above.
3. Bandwidth and Storage
Bandwidth and storage are also important factors to maintaining your website and making sure it runs properly.
However, you need to find the balance in selecting the right amount of bandwidth and storage. Analyze the purpose of your website and how much traffic your website is generating per month. Then choose a storage plan that will not face any issue when your regular traffic visits your website.
It is recommended to go for a little higher server storage than you need because there can be a case of a surge in traffic all of a sudden and if your server storage gets overloaded, your website will crash.
If you are running a high-level website that gains hundreds of thousands of traffic then there is no doubt in not taking a host that provides unlimited disk space for your website.
4. Loading Speed
One of the most prominent ways to optimize your website’s SEO is by making sure that it loads fast. The loading speed holds a significant effect on your website’s ranking.
Google prefers sites that have fast loading speed so that readers can quickly access the websites and navigate through them with ease. If not, then those readers will leave the site and not visit it again.
You need to choose a web hosting service that has fast loading speed. It will allow your customers to stay interacted with the content available on your site without having to wait for any delay in loading.
Pro-tip to maximize loading speed is to remove unnecessary plugins and add-ons in your website and of course choosing a reliable web hosting that has good loading speed.
5. Don’t Compromise on Price
The price should not be the ultimatum when choosing web hosting. A web hosting that fits your criteria perfectly might cost more than you are expecting but it will be worth spending the money on a web hosting of your choice.
Make sure to check features that you need to have in your web hosting service. A cheaply priced web hosting can detriment your website’s performance and it will cost in the long term. So you need to find the perfect balance that has the best price to performance option.
6. Scalability
Nasdaq’s Simon Ball, head of digital media services at Nasdaq Corporate Solutions says that scalability is crucial when it comes to great hosting.
As your website keeps improving it also grows the audience, this is why it is important to schedule a scaling session to navigate the growth of your business. Scaling allows you to eliminate the risk of website errors and crashes that could occur due to a sudden surge in your website’s traffic.
With Scalability, you might upgrade your hosting plans to a greater level since your previous plan does not suffice the traffic you are generating today.
Every once in a while, measures like these should be taken to optimize your website. You can also downgrade if there is a decrease in your traffic in the future.
7. Look for Built-in Security Features
While the internet is a great place to expand your business you are also risking the fact that hackers and scam agents can get access to your information.
Security is a big concern on the internet. So there is no denying that you need to look for built-in security features when getting a web hosting service.
The first thing you need to look for is hardware security. Make sure that the servers where your website information is stored are safe and secure.
Many premium web hosting has built-in security features like secure access that limit the number of people who can virtually access the servers. You need to ensure that you have this feature in your service.
Other great features to look out for in web hosting are Back-ups, DDOS prevention, CDN support, malware detection, and network monitoring.
8. Confirm the host’s Refund Policy and Guarantees
Many people are intimidated by the amount of money they have to spend on web hosting. They are not overly confident that the money they spent on a hosting service will be worth it or not.
This is a great sales tactic called refund policy or money-back guarantees are announced when promoting such web hosting services.
It helps the hosting company as well as the customer. The customer will now be less intimidating about purchasing a plan and can use the web hosting freely.
It is always great to look for a host’s refund policy and guarantees especially if you are someone who is planning to buy web hosting for the first time.
Here are the best Web hosting plans that offer money-back guarantees ranging from 30 days to 90 days.
- Bluehost
- Hostgator
- InMotionHosting
- Hostinger
9. Customer Support
A web hosting can offer all the greatest features to you but the lack of customer support can harm your experience and website’s performance.
You should always go for customer support that is always ready to assist you with any issue you might be facing. In times of crisis, good customer support will guide you to resolve the issue even if it takes hours.
Check the type of support your web hosting offers. Is it live chat or video calls, virtual assistance? And is it 24/7? If you can find a web hosting that offers all these then you are good to go in the customer support department.
10. Do a Free Trial
Many web hosting offers a free trial period where a potential paying customer can try out the service without being obligated to pay any fee.
This period is crucial for the free trial user as you can determine whether the features and overall experience fit your criteria. It is also important to find out whether some features that you thought to be working flawlessly may not work as expected.
Keep in mind that free trials in web hosting restrict lots of premium features so it means that free trial does not give you the full picture about the hosting rather gives you an idea of how it will work.
Nevertheless, a free trial is great to know the service on your own without having to spend a penny.
Conclusion
It is not an easy task to choose the right web hosting for your website but this guide took a chance at making its readers better understand and be more confident when the time of purchasing a web hosting comes.
If you have read the tips mentioned above then it will be a lot easier for you to choose the best web hosting service.
Regardless of the features that web hosting provides, you need to understand that different web hosting services come with a distinctive purpose. So if you run a certain type of website then you need to choose a web hosting that deals with the type of website that you operate.
So always keep remembering these things and keep posting good content on your website and you will see positive results.
