A hosting service provides websites a place to live on the internet. This enables people to search and visit websites. The right hosting service ensures the success of your website by improving its performance.
When it comes to choosing a web hosting service provider, picking a reputed one that has years of experience is not enough. Here are some more important factors that make a trusted web hosting service:
The Type Of Hosting You Need
Dedicated hosting: A dedicated host provides you a server that hosts only your website. You can use the entire space and the power offered by it. Dedicated hosting is ideal for you if you are a large business with a website that attracts huge traffic. However, you will have to manage aspects like updates, backups, security, etc., and possess the appropriate technical knowledge to do it.
Managed hosting: Managed hosting is where all hosting responsibilities are handled for you by a hosting company. The company will also be responsible for ensuring a 100% uptime for your website. This will allow you time to focus on important aspects of your business, like getting more customers. But managed hosting too has some disadvantages. When a fully managed hosting service handles your website, you lose control over it. You also have to pay a lot more for it than you would for the other kinds of hosting. You should choose managed hosting only if you have a big website with huge traffic.
Shared hosting: Shared hosting is where multiple websites share a server and disk space. Shared hosting is affordable and ideal for new websites that don’t have a lot of traffic and don’t need a lot of bandwidth. When you use a shared host, you won’t have to maintain your website yourself. But on the other hand, you could also be sharing your server with spam websites which could get you blacklisted along with them.
Virtual private network: A website with a virtual private server shares a server with other websites but gets its own section of the server. A VPN costs less than dedicated hosting and more than shared hosting. You will have to manage some of the tasks by yourself and require technical knowledge to do it.
Cloud hosting: Cloud hosting has servers running on public Cloud platforms like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Cloud. These platforms use multiple physical servers, so your website will never experience downtime. In case one server fails, another will host your website. Here you get to handle expansion seamlessly by just paying additional amounts to get additional space.
Disk Storage Space
The amount of text, multimedia files, and code that your website will have will depend on the type of the website and its purpose. If you have a big website you will have to pay a huge amount to a hosting service to get large storage space. But if you have a small website, you can go for a cheaper hosting service that offers less storage space, or choose one that offers unlimited bandwidth and disk space to allow your website to grow.
Budget
Though the price is an important consideration while choosing a hosting service, it should not drive your decision. An expensive hosting service does not guarantee a high standard, and a cheap hosting provider doesn’t mean cheap quality. You will have to consider your requirements while looking for a hosting service. Time is another important consideration in the case of some companies – the longer you hire them for, the more price you will have to pay them.
Page Load Speed
The ideal page load time for a website is less than two seconds. If it takes any longer to load, visitors will abandon it. The loading speed of your website will depend on the server’s speed and the disk space offered by your hosting company.
Uptime Guarantee
Along with loading quickly it is also important that your website runs efficiently. The more uptime a website has, the more visitors it will have and the better user experience it will provide. You should choose a host that will provide you more than a 99% uptime guarantee.
Data Security
Websites are prone to security issues like phishing, hacking, etc., putting user information at risk. A hosting company should provide you an SSL certificate to keep your data safe and back it up regularly for you to be able to recover it easily.
Free Trial
If you are a new company that runs on a low budget or would like to get to know a hosting company before hiring them, choose one that offers a free trial. This allows you to test the different aspects of its plan and opt out easily.
Feedback
Checking feedback from the past clients of a hosting company can help you to know the quality of their services. Check their website and social media sites for feedback and rating.
Location
Your website server’s location directly impacts its page load speed. The closer your website’s data centre’s location is to that of your users, the faster user requests are received and processed. Another advantage of opting for a local hosting service is that it is cheaper.
