7 Essential Things to Look At When Choosing a Good Web Host
Buying web hosting and choosing a good web host can be tricky – there’s plenty to choose from and more than a million-and-one web hosting companies offering all sorts of web hosting services and packages, so it can be a bit overwhelming, especially for someone who doesn’t have any experience with purchasing web hosting.
The truth is that web hosting is something that can easily make or break your website. Think of a web hosting service as the foundation of your online presence – choosing a good web host will allow you to establish a strong online presence, while a bad web host will tarnish it.
And for businesses, where the stakes are already high, having an unreliable web host can be the difference between success and failure!
Here are 7 things that you should look at when choosing a web hosting service, that will not only save you money and resources in the long run, they will also help you establish a strong business, corporate or personal presence online.
1. Reputation and name
This is usually one of the first things that I look at when buying web hosting. The truth is that reputable web hosting services are reputable for a reason – they have provided good, reliable web hosting services on a consistent basis for a long period of time, and have hence built a good, strong reputation based on their success and reliability.
This is why I’ve given a lot of my business to the likes of HostGator – it’s a good reputable brand that is trusted by many in the world. You can choose from other like GoDaddy or other.
2. Plans and Packages
Now, this is important, and a bit technical as well. In layman terms, web hosting packages come in all different shapes and sizes – starting from shared web hosting packages, to dedicated packages, cloud web hosting packages, VPS packages and so on.
• Dedicated packages: these are the cheapest when it comes to price, and hence represent the most basic form of web hosting. Starting from anywhere between a few dollars-a-month to around under $10-a-month shared web hosting is exactly what it says it is – you share a single web hosting server with many different websites. These packages are perfect for small websites since they come at a reasonable price-point, however, large websites may experience performance issues and it might be worthwhile for them to invest in dedicated hosting (more below).
• Dedicated packages: in simple terms, a single computer for one website, as the name implies. Only your website is hosted on the server (hence ‘dedicated’) which means your website has access to all the server’s resources (RAM, processing power, etc). Dedicated packages are hence much more powerful and suited for a large website. It also means that they don’t come cheap, and cost a pretty penny – with prices often starting from several hundred dollars for a single month (!) to even more.
• Cloud packages: Cloud web hosting is a relatively newer kind of web hosting, and for me, it is by far the best solution for medium and large websites. Cloud web hosting packages have the ability to dynamically add resources when a website requires them (such as when there’s a sudden surge of visitors, for instance), and take these resources away from the website when they’re not needed, hence saving money in the process (think of it as clouds or server resources drifting in and away as and when needed).
These are just 3 examples of the most common type of web hosting plans and packages that are being offered. There are plenty of others, such as VPS hosting, grid, cluster and reseller hosting, to name a few.
Do your research before taking the plunge!
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3. Web Hosting Plans
The next thing that you want to look at the plans that they have on offer. And then there are different plans and packages within each of these options: some plans give you unlimited web hosting space, unlimited bandwidth and the ability to add unlimited domains, while others may put a certain limit on these parameters. It is important to have a look at all these plans and packages in detail, and see if there’s a plan that suits your
4. Reliability
This is important. An unreliable web host – which there are plenty of out there – will not just be a huge pain, it will cause you to lose business, visitors and clients. Almost every web host that you come across will promise 99.9% uptime, however, the truth is (and I say this from experience) only a very few of them actually deliver on this promise.
Reliability in terms of up-time then becomes an important consideration, and this is where good web hosts excel – they strive to be the most reliable web hosts out there.
5. Hardware
You might also want to have a look at the hardware of the server your website will be hosted on – including the memory (RAM), processor (CPU), as well as the uplink, storage space and bandwidth being offered with them. This is important especially when it comes to dedicated hosting packages, as you’re essentially paying for the server, so you want the quickest server and the best in terms of hardware.
6. Customer service
This too ranks high-up on my priority list, right up there! Customer service and after-sales support is something that’s very important for me. Ideally, I want to get in touch with my web host whenever I need to, and as quickly as possible. Multiple channels and ways to get in touch with the web host is also something that I highly value – as would anyone else.
Good web hosts allow you to get in touch with them via multiple channels – over the phone, on chat, and via email. They also offer 24/7 after-sales support and make it their priority to not keeping their customers on hold for too long. Time is money, and good web hosting services value their customer’s time.
7. Value for money
Finally, have a look at everything that a web hosting company offers – the plans, the packages, the reliability, the hardware, and the customer service, and assess whether:
(a) The web host, along with the web hosting plans that it’s offering, suit your particular needs (be it personal or business needs) and requirements or not.
(b) It represents good value for money or not. Because ultimately, web hosting represents an investment, and you want your investment to give you the highest-possible return!
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Read more from my blog