Your website is indispensable for your business success in our current market space. It’s an extremely efficient way to communicate and make your voice heard.
Are you considering launching your own website? Then you must have thought about a web hosting service, too. But how can you choose the best one? It’s like writing an RFP for software development, in a way. You must take your time, do your research, and come up with some options.
Since there are so many on the internet, it may be difficult to choose. You probably worry about content and web design, and now you’re wondering which company is best suited to help you develop your idea into something more tangible.
Evaluate the differences between several web hosting companies to find the most appropriate options. Keep reading to discover five factors that teach you how to choose the best web hosting company for your business.
A few words on Web Hosting
Use a web hosting service when you want people to see your website. Third parties usually provide such services to allow people on the internet to access your website.
Web hosting services also provide secure places to store website assets, mainly coding, pictures, text, and video features appearing on your site. This feature increases the security of your website’s content.
Of course, you can look into additional tech support and enhancements meant to improve the user’s quality of life while on your website. That could mean choosing a service with faster loading speeds, for example. A simple Google search will show you the most popular and well-known web host providers. Some examples are GoDaddy, BlueHost, and WPEngine.
Reasons to choose a Web Hosting company
To find the best deal for your needs, research the companies you gravitate toward. Their web hosting packages can have different features that may or may not be useful to you. High levels of security are a must because security breaches or stolen data can disrupt your work on the back end of things. And they can lead to a loss in sales, too.
An appropriate web hosting company will provide technical stability with high uptimes. When your website is frequently down, it suffers in search rankings because search engines are unable to index and access the material. And that leads to losses in brand credibility, something you don’t want to happen.
Ideally, you’re looking for high security, awesome site performance, tech support, and great response times. Your revenue depends on your investment in your website performance and user experience.
How to choose a Web hosting company
Determine what type of web hosting you require
As soon as you understand your business needs, you’re one step closer to getting the best web hosting service. If you’re using your website as a resume or brand portfolio, you probably don’t need all the bells and whistles a full-blown online platform that hosts videos or 24-hour streaming would benefit from.
Consider that a website with high daily traffic requires dedicated web servers. It will probably not work well on shared web servers where many small website share space.
There are different types of web hosting services. The cheapest is shared hosting, which we just mentioned. You share the server and its resources with other websites.
Another option is VPS, a form of shared hosting with fewer websites to share the resources.
Also read: Which Are the 6 Best Web Hosting For Small Businesses?
Dedicated hosting means your website runs on its own server and has all that power at its disposal. It’s the most expensive form of web hosting, so keep that in mind.
Other options worth considering are reseller hosting, WordPress hosting, and cloud hosting. So you have a lot to think about and shop around until you find your best option.
Consider your bandwidth needs and loading speeds
Although many new websites don’t need a lot of bandwidth, consider the future and leave room for growth. Ensure your hosting plan is flexible in case you need to adjust it in the future. The web hosting company you choose shouldn’t lock you in a specific bandwidth plan.
Bandwidth is the total amount of data that you can transfer at once. It’s used interchangeably with data transfer, although they don’t mean exactly the same thing. Data transfer is the specific amount of data you can use over a certain period (usually a month). It’s essential to know your data limitations before you run into trouble like slowed down data transfer speeds or fees due to allotted data transfer exceeds.
Loading speed is essential from an SEO perspective. Google prioritizes sites that load faster. They have the highest chance to provide users with a good experience. It may not seem like a must-have metric, but loading speed may mean the difference between a visitor consuming your content or leaving your website because of delays.
Find the storage sweet spot
The purpose of your website dictates your storage needs. If you have many files that you plan to add, you will need a bigger storage space, for example. Regardless of your specific case, always do your research and get the service most suitable for your needs.
If your needs are manageable, consider a cheaper plan and save money that you would otherwise pay for space you don’t actively use. If you need considerable space, look for a web hosting company ready to provide that for you instead. You wouldn’t want to run out of memory very fast.
Security features and customer support
Security breaches can happen anywhere. You can avoid that by doing your research before choosing any web hosting company. It’s essential to have SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) to protect your customers’ information. It also facilitates secure online transactions.
As you can see, it’s not easy to trust someone with your content and website. You must ensure that the web hosting provider you choose can completely protect your customers and your content with safety features, redundancy systems, and constant backups.
And, just in case something happens and you need help, good customer support is a nice addition to your plan. Customer support can make a difference when managing a crisis. It can save you from extensive downtimes and losing business. Find the support options the web host companies you’re considering hiring are offering to their clients and check out how it works before making your decision.
If possible, do a free trial to see how the host server would work for you. During this free trial, you can find out if it’s worth hiring the service and what obstacles you could encounter when launching a website.
Conclusions
Paying attention to these tips brings you that much closer to hiring the best web hosting service for your brand. It is always important to note that there are numerous web hosting services available on the market. You must first evaluate your objectives before selecting a suitable type of plan.
The good thing is, nowadays, providers are on top of things. They already have packages for different market segments. It’s only a matter of time and research before you find your ideal one!
