Every website needs a web host to get online, so finding the right one is crucial to optimize your online performance.
With numerous web hosts available worldwide, choosing can be difficult as each web host offers different products, prices, support, and features.
To help you narrow down your choices, we’ll explain eight best practices to find the right hosting provider for your website.
By the end of this article, you can choose the right web hosting provider to help your website succeed.
1. Determine Your Hosting Needs
Before searching for a suitable web hosting provider, understanding the needs of your website is essential in your search. Some important things to consider:
Project Scope
Choose the purpose of your website, whether it is a personal portfolio or a business promotion page, with a request a quote for WooCommerce feature. For example, a freelance web developer running a small business will need more hosting resources to create more sites.
Platform
Consider how you want to build your website when choosing between a self-hosted or hosted service. Find a web host that supports your preferred web creation tool.
Budget
Set a budget for web hosting services. Some platforms cost more than others, so budgeting can help manage your long-term expenses.
Features
Check the overall bandwidth and storage required to run your store. Note the flexibility of the web hosting solution.
Understanding these points will help you make better decisions in the following steps. We recommend noting down your website needs before moving forward.
2. Understand Different Hosting Types
There are four different types of website hosting.
Shared Hosting
With shared hosting, your account and websites share resources with other accounts on that server. Budget-friendly is the only reason to choose shared hosting. Because the accounts share resources, shared hosting is usually the cheapest way to host a website.
Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting
A Virtual Private Server (VPS) is a hosting plan that combines dedicated and shared features. Website content is hosted in virtual sections of a web server to mimic a dedicated server while sharing the server between multiple users.
Cloud Hosting
Cloud hosting services take the dedicated approach one step further and spread your website across multiple servers. It can help deal with sudden spikes in traffic and use the power of the cloud to keep your website up and running.
Dedicated Hosting
In dedicated hosting, you have the whole physical server just for your website(s). You get everything and don’t have to share it with anyone else. The critical advantage of dedicated hosting is complete control over the physical environment. You can choose hardware, software, etc.
3. Evaluate Security Measures
Keeping your website secure should be paramount to your web hosting company.
Web hosting servers must be equipped with robust firewalls and constantly monitored by the hosting company for unusual activity or unauthorized intrusion.
Your web hosting company should also support Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificates, an additional security layer that encrypts information between your server and the user’s browser.
It is becoming standard practice for all sites and is a must if you sell products online or accept payments on your website.
4. Review Customer Support
A reliable support team ready to help 24/7 is essential to resolve website issues quickly. Before choosing a web host, ensure the company offers multiple support options.
Although there are different types of support services, below are the main ones to look for in a web host:
Live Chat
This popular customer service approach is excellent for getting quick responses. Most web hosts also provide chat transcripts to track the issue and progress.
This method is perfect for urgent questions or queries. Customer service may only resolve the issue with an immediate response.
Phone Call
If you prefer to explain problems verbally, look for a hosting service that offers phone support. Note that most service providers only offer this as a premium service.
Knowledge Base
After speaking directly with customer service, check if the web host has knowledge that answers common questions. This resource can be handy for beginners in web development.
Tutorials or Blogs
Another feature of a reliable web host is the provision of industry-related tutorials and blog posts. It’s great for people who like to learn and solve problems independently.
If you need clarification on the quality of a service provider’s customer support, look for reviews of their service.
5. Read Reviews and Ask for Recommendations
When looking for the reliability and reputation of web hosts, check out reputable sites. Researching a web hosting company through third-party reviews helps discover persistent problems or complaints from existing users.
Pay attention to how the company responds to complaints, if at all. This will give you an idea of how the hosting provider deals with dissatisfied customers.
6. Understand Terms and Contracts
Most people agree to a company’s terms of service without bothering to read exactly what they’re agreeing to, resulting in unwanted fees, policies, and restrictions you need to know about.
Terms of service usually include a refund policy, which is essential to know if you have a negative experience or find better service later.
7. Check Pricing
Web hosting can cost as few dollars to thousands per month or even be “free of cost.” As with everything, you receive what you want.
“Free” hosting is offered in exchange for the hosting company running ads on your website.
A cheap web hosting contract likely means you have limited flexibility and resource access, which can lead to performance issues.
Ensure you know your hosting requirements so you don’t end up with a “big deal” that doesn’t meet your hosting needs.
8. Speed
Visitors expect your website to load within seconds. If it takes longer, they will most likely leave. Google and other search engines also use page speed as a ranking factor, so slow performance can damage your search rankings and drive away customers.
Although many factors affect website speed, a fast server and hosting provider with enough memory and processing power are critical to lightning-fast page speed for any business.
Conclusion
Choosing a web host can seem daunting at first – there are so many, and they all offer different packages, prices, and features. It’s hard to tell the good from the bad among all the noise.
We’ve created this guide to help you focus on the essentials and see what’s most important to you. Now you know exactly what to look for to find the right website for your business needs.
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