But what factors should be considered prior to choosing a web hosting company? Let’s have a quick look-
1. Know the needs of your site
Prior to choosing a web host provider, understand the needs of your website. For example, try to explore the type of website you would be catering to, whether WordPress needs to be used or not and lastly how much traffic must be generated.
The more comprehensive one can be, the easier it will be to decide on the hosting provider. For WordPress, appraise a managed WordPress hosting provider. If your site is centered around an online store, hosting providers specialized in eCommerce will do.
What if you’re an absolute starter? Always opt for a shared hosting plan with a reliable organization. Thanks to its affordability and convenience. Either way, it eliminates the concerns of backend issues such as perpetuation and safety throughout.
2. Check out on the server credibility or uptime tally
It’s very important to stay online for any website. Hence, always look out for the stability of the web host provider. Nowadays, various server monitoring tools come available in tracking a web host. Meanwhile, a look at the uptime counts can say it all. The current industry standards direct to 99.95% uptime. Any figure below 99% isn’t desirable. However, premium accounts strive to offer better server security with some going up to more than 99.99%.
3. Ability to improve the server
As a beginner, one should choose a provider that permits to reform the server over time. Because, even with a sound shared hosting plan, there is a limit to the resources. When a website grows popular attracting huge traffic (above 30,000 organic visitors), a shared hosting plan will fail to harbour them in the given bandwidth.
Hence the play of upgradation. A hosting provider enabling you to upgrade your plan will be much better than finding a new host to migrate the entire website.
Here’s a handy tip for beginners: A VPS or dedicated server plan provides greater server resorts once the website outlives the shared hosting plan. Therefore, search for web hosts that advance elasticity in augmentation as per the demands of the website.
4. Research the signup and renewal price
One needs to know 2 basic prices with web hosts – the signup price and the renewal price. In most cases, initial investment in a plan might not be the same at the time of renewal. Sometimes, the renewal cost can even be higher depending on the range of offers or discounts. Regrettably, it’s obvious for hosting companies to increase the renewal pricing on the go. Unless one hopes to change the web host every 2 to 3 years, the practice can’t be avoided.
Hence, it’s wise to go for web hosts that are reasonable with their price hikes(not beyond 100%).
What if you aren’t experienced in the domain? Just check out the ToS of the web host on the framework for resumption charges. It usually exists on the homepage. Else go for a quick keyword search.
5. Find out if the web host provider has a refund policy or free trial
Using a web host can be a pricey venture. Especially if one is starting with a definite budget. For such a reason, a hosting company offers some kind of refund policy and/or free trial period. The scheme can significantly help to cut back on costs.
However, some providers charge a cancellation fee at the time of repealing the account during the trial session. Abstain from them. Instead, companies offering money-back promises with respective refunds after the trial period should be opted for.
6. Check out the essential features
Never miss on the ground check of indispensable attributes which range over one-click installer, .htaccess File Access, FTP/SFTP Access, file manager, and DNS management.
In case of a beginner, stay away from Disk Space and Data Transfer Capacity.
However, most shared hosting plans proffer sufficient server resources (RAM and processing power) for minor websites. If you are concerned about storage and bandwidth, third-party platforms such as Imgur, YouTube, Google Doc, can easily tackle images, videos, and documents.
7. Do they have backups for site or not
Backups are requisite for a website. Even with a couple of safety measures around the globe, a website can counter crash, failure, virus, or hack. There comes the play of good backup strategy. One can always retrogress to a working website in case of an accident.
A good web host provider can put back the full site in slightest downtime. That way you can circumvent any serious loss.
Some of the crucial questions regarding backups include:
- If they run regular complete backups
- If one can manually backup the site via control panel
- If you can use programs to devise auto backups of the site
- Whether you can reinstate the backup files yourself or you need the help of support staff
8. The quality of customer support (online chat or over the phone)
Sometimes you might face server issues that can’t be solved on their own. Then a good customer support team will be your saviour. But how to figure out its actual quality? It’s either via live chat or telephone. No matter what, the issue will be immediately resolved. One can carry out a simple ground check of the hosting provider’s support team over Facebook or forums.
9. Swift server responsiveness and speed
As Google has come to consider mobile page loading speed with regard to rankings, a fast-loading page stays forever important for any website and business.
Hence go for hosting providers that offer a steady and fast server speed. It won’t just refine overall user experience but also topple SEO rankings on the whole.
You can check on a web host’s speed and server responsiveness by examining the Time To First Byte (TTFB). Tools like Bitcatcha and WebpageTest can be resorted to in the process.
Overview
To summarize, perform every mindful step with due care. It can help save a lot of time and trouble in the near future.