Website hosting plays a vital role in the performance of any website. It won’t be wrong to say “Website hosting can make or break your website“. Having said that, it’s very important for you to take all the necessary precautions and choose reliable yet affordable web hosting for your website.
While it’s true that the web hosting cost can affect your overall website development cost, there are several parameters that must be considered over price.
Reliable web hosting will always give you peace of mind so that you can focus more on your website and core business.
Although, when you hire a web developer to build your website, he or she can also recommend some of the best web hosting options based on their own experience, you must also do your homework to avoid any kind of chaos.
In this blog post, we have shared 9 tips for you to choose the right web hosting service provider for your website.
Let’s get started!
#1 Availability/Uptime
The availability or uptime of your server is very crucial for your website’s performance.
What’s uptime?
Uptime is a technical jargon used by web hosting providers or website developers. It simply means the time that your website will stay online and won’t fail due to errors with the servers.
Most of the reliable hosting providers offer 99.99% uptime, which is good. Therefore, you must also make sure to subscribe to only those web hosting companies that provide 99.99% uptime.
It will ensure that your site is always available for your target customers.
If your website experiences downtime abruptly, it may affect not only the user experience of your website, but it will also affect your SEO credibility and brand reputation too.
#2 Support
Support is very important to check and ensure before you engage any web hosting provider because troubleshooting server-related issues can get quite technical and sometimes even your website builder can’t help much in it.
Here comes the support of your web hosting provider.
Fortunately, most of the hosting providers offer 24/7 support. Not only that, but they are also available on different communication channels such as:
- Emails
- Live chat
- Calls
- Forums
You definitely need strong & prompt technical support from your hosting provider because you can’t afford to leave your website issues unattended for a few days.
#3 Security
The security of your website is as important as its development in the first place.
Your website developer may do all the necessary things to make your website secure, but at the same time, your hosting server also needs to be secured.
How can you check and make sure that your hosting server is secured?
Below are a few things to check on your hosting server for security:
- SSL & firewall
- DDoS prevention
- Malware detection
- Operating system
- Backup arrangements
#4 Performance
The performance of your website is directly associated with the performance of your hosting server. It is, therefore, crucial to subscribe with only those hosting companies that offer high-performance servers.
What are the things that decide the performance of a server?
Things like FastCGI caching, SSD storage, and multiple data centers will always ensure that your website’s loading speed won’t be compromised.
#5 Reviews
No matter what they say about their services & support, you must check the existing customers’ reviews of your shortlisted hosting company.
There are several ways to check the reviews of a hosting company, mainly below:
- There are several web portals that talk about unbiased reviews of different web hosting companies. Some of these portals also showcase the customers’ testimonials of different hosting companies.
- You can check also their customers’ reviews on their own website.
- You can Google the web hosting company name with the word “reviews” and you will find tons of information from different sources.
- Your website builder can also share his own first-hand experience with different hosting companies. Being a web developer, it’s their job to deal with these hosting companies regularly.
Before you finally settle with any web hosting company, do make sure to check their reviews to avoid any kind of possible chaos.
#6 Cost
Although the cost of your website hosting should not be a primary factor while choosing a hosting company, you must make sure that your hosting package doesn’t make a hole in your pocket.
Not all expensive things are good. The same applies to your web hosting package too.
Due to the stiff competition in the web hosting industry, you can easily find a lot of vendors who can offer you hosting services at a much affordable price.
Generally, for shared web hosting, you may end up paying between $60-$120 per annum. If your website has been developed using WordPress, then any shared hosting package should be sufficient to accommodate your website.
#7 Other important services
Due to the growing competition in the web hosting industry, many companies offer several supporting / add-on services to boost the overall performance of your website.
Below are some of the useful added services that your hosting company may provide, without even charging any additional amount:
- Backup provisions
- Image optimization tools
- High-class security
- One-click WordPress installation
#8 Control
Another important thing to check before you engage any web hosting company is getting full control of your server.
Are you getting the control panel access of your server? If yes, then you or your website builder can do a lot of things without relying on hosting support.
Below are some of the important areas in which you should have your full control:
- Control panel (cPanel)
- Emails management
- Database management
- PHP version management
- Softaculous (an application to deploy CMS platforms like WordPress in just a few clicks)
#9 Server location
Your server location plays an important role in the performance of your website. The location of your server shouldn’t be too far from the location of your target audience. If the location is too far, your website may load slower for your users.
But if your hosting provider does have data centers in all of the major countries/regions, then you don’t need to worry about the server location.
In simpler words, you must check and make sure that either your server location is not too far from your users’ location or your hosting provider has the necessary arrangements for the data centers around your target location.
