Hosting forms the foundation of a website. The hosting company that you choose has a direct impact on the quality of your website and in turn, on the reputation of your organization. It determines the ease of management of your website for you and the ease of its use for its visitors.
Hiring a hosting company is not a one-time expense. There will come a time when the company’s services are not up to the mark for you, or when your requirements change. In this article we have listed a few signs you need to watch out for that indicate you need a new host:
Excessive Downtime
When your visitors visit your website and see an error message on it, it means that it is experiencing downtime. Every organization wishes for 100% uptime for its website, but no hosting company can provide that. However, too much downtime also harms your website and business as it forces your visitors to visit a different website. Your hosting company should provide you with more than 99% uptime. Any less than that, and you should consider replacing the company.
Addition Of Inexplicable Costs
It is important for a hosting company to maintain transparency and establish trust with its clients and customers. An important part of this is having clarity on the costs involved in the company’s package. If the company charges additional fees that you were previously unaware of without offering any explanation to it, you should immediately terminate your relationship with them to prevent it from happening again.
Slow Page Load Time
Online search engines prioritize user experience – they prioritize websites that load quickly. In order to have a good search engine ranking, your website must have good speed.
Like less bandwidth, slow page load time too can be detrimental for you if you have a growing website. An increase in the amount of traffic or too many people visiting it at the same time can be some of the reasons for slow page load time. If your hosting company is not able to handle this, you should change it.
Expensive Upgradation Process
Your relationship with your hosting company is a long-term one that spans months to years. Therefore, it is important that you find an affordable one. As your organization expands, your website grows. There will be more content that you will have to add to it and you will require more space to host it. If your hosting company is charging you more for your expansion, it means that the time has come to switch to a new company because good ones don’t charge you more as you grow.
Lack Of Adequate Backups
Your hosting company needs to regularly create backup copies of your website. They can be used to revive it when it crashes or gets hacked, or its files get deleted accidentally. If the company does not back up your website regularly your visitors will frequently see error messages on it. Consequently, they may never return to your website, resulting in huge losses for your organization. If you find this happening with your website frequently, you should look for a new hosting company.
Poor Technical Support
You will never know when your website will experience downtime or even minor glitches. Your hosting company needs to provide you with round-the-clock support on the phone as well as online to bring your website back at any time. If it fails to do so, you will lose your customers to a competitor.
If your hosting company lacks the experience and expertise to provide you with support or provide a clear solution in 1-2 days, it is time for you to go for a new company.
Lack Of Adequate Security Measures
Information security is a major concern for organizations that handle sensitive customer data like their personal details or payment information. Ensuring customer data security is even more important for bigger organizations because their reputation is on the line. Customers will cease to do business with organizations that fail to protect their privacy.
If your hosting company does not have security measures in place like an SSL certificate, antivirus software, malware scanner, etc. then you shouldn’t think twice to replace it.
Hosting Plan Limit Reached
As your website starts growing, it will need more of resources like bandwidth and disk storage space. If you are a new organization with a small website using a cheap or shared host, its resources won’t suffice as you grow as they are too less for large websites. And once you run out of your resources, your website won’t be available for your visitors to access. You should monitor the amount of your resources as you grow and switch your hosting company before you exhaust your resources.
