You may already notice, there are countless hosting companies today. Almost every hosting carries some good features. Some of them offer quality uptime and the fastest speed; others offer support and security.
And at the end of the day, it all matters. Why?
Because while you are choosing web hosting, you need to have a complete idea to get the desired result.
What do you expect from the service provider, and what will be the price?
In this article, you will discover; How to choose a web hosting provider company that is not only good for your site which also allows your business to grow, get your brand recognized, and give the fastest most secured journey they might ever have before.
What You Must Consider While Choosing A Quality Host
Now you may have the rock-solid details the way it requires; let's get started on which hosting provider company will cover your exact needs.
Before we go so far, let's discover what you must count on all the requirements your website should have.
Strong Security:
Years ago, this was not a single issue at all.
But now it matters.
Countless hackers are exploring every single second to hack your business websites.
Why?
Because if they can access your site, they can bypass your traffic to their site and make money with that traffic or destroy your business.
So when you have large traffic on your site.
It demands strong security to prevent hackers activities and grow your business.
And today, almost every business website needs to be secure. Some of them require a little more security than others.
Like e-commerce websites with payment details need more security than the regular blog without payment.
Professional Emails:
Business needs professional emails for Support, Sales, Terms & policies, close the business deal, and many other places.
But if your hosting provides less email than you need.
Then you consider hosting that gives you more mail addresses.
Because you now have versatile choices from so many prominent brands and businesses.
And it would naturally help if you take the opportunity to have the benefits inside the package as you choose for the website.
Data Size:
Have you ever noticed how large your files are?
How often do you publish content?
Is that all print, audio, or videos, etc.?
Remember: The larger your data are, the more storage and bandwidth you need.
If you’re not sure how much data you have, check what your site contains.
Sometimes it is just a waste of money if you have less data, but the hosting is larger. You don't have to hire a ship to carry a pizza. You can, but it charges your fortune.
Traffic Size:
Traffic counts.
It's impossible to run a huge amount of traffic using just a little space like shared hosting.
Especially when your website carries a large amount of traffic, it requires more space.
Space to carry more content and data, space to manage the site's speed.
The expert recommendation is; match the hosting based on your current traffic size.
So you don't have to spend or waste a single dime.
Your audience doesn't have to wait to load pages.
Factors to avoid while choosing a web host:
Cheap hosting:
While making decisions about choosing web hosting, you must avoid cheap anyway.
It doesn’t matter how little services your website requires.
If you go for cheap hosting, you will face different issues one after another.
Certainly, you will not get better service regarding your issues from a cheap hosting provider.
Unlimited Offers:
As a buyer of anything, offers and sales influence us.
It’s easy to understand when you can sell a product at a high price, you will not go for the price reduction.
The same rule applies to hosting providers.
Don’t go for unlimited offers.
If they offer unlimited hosting, it's just for advertisement purposes.
You will only be able to use a percentage of your bandwidth before your visitors get an error message.
The web hosting features explained to look on host to work with
How to choose a web hosting provider is about making a wise decision and this requires looking for some key features. We are going to describe some crucial features that can play a significant role to justify a good host.
. They are like-
- Storage and bandwidth
- Speed(Performance)
- Support
- Security
- Scalability and
- Reliability
- Flexible Plans & Pricing
1. Storage and bandwidth:
Hosting providers will be determined as user-friendly if they offer you sufficient storage at a reasonable price with unmetered bandwidth.
You can store as many files as you want if you have available storage, and you can transmit as much data you want with unlimited bandwidth.
Typically for a website with 100 pages, 350MB of disk storage is needed. A 300 posts or pages blog requires a minimum of 1GB of disk storage. And for bandwidth, a website with 5000 visitors a month opening 3 pages of 2MB in size will need you to have a bandwidth of 25000 MB or 25 GB. Though your storage and bandwidth need depend on which type of website you are about to launch. A good host will provide you accordingly.
2. Speed (Performance):
When it's about the internet, we always talk about speed. Speed is considered a feature that determines quality in one word.
Good hosting must provide good speed. Speed influences SEO as well as page size optimization, Image resolution, and hosting.
Statistics says that “It takes 10.3 seconds on average to fully load a webpage on a desktop”.
Not only for e-commerce, also for personal blogs, pages, if visitors search for a page and it doesn’t show up, right that moment, you lose your customer.
Other statistics show that “2.37% of your customer bounces if your page takes more than 5 seconds to load”.
If your website loading time is 5 seconds, it is faster than most 25% of the other websites.
If the loading time is 2.9 seconds, it is faster than most 50% of the other websites.
And if your website loading time is 1.7 seconds, it is faster than most 75% of the other websites.
Have you ever visited a website and instantly left for the slow speed?
I can bet most of us have this kind of experience.
We hate waiting online, especially when we need something more urgent. Another challenge is when your audience comes to your site and skip for a reason they would naturally hate to go again.
It will ruin your reputation and let the competitor get rich.
That's why your hosting must be designed with the standard speed.
The more speed you have on your site, the better experience you can provide them. It will naturally increase your user experience and SEO for sure.
So, to keep pace with the speedy virtual world, you need to host your website with a good host.
In this part, we will focus on the performance of a website, and by saying performance, we mean speed. If the website takes an abnormally long time to load, this is not how it was meant to be.
How fast a website will load makes the web host more acceptable. Some other factors help to measure the performance as well.
Resources:
One major factor to consider while choosing a web host is storage and bandwidth.
It depends on the size of a website.
A small website with a few visitors will need small storage. And a website that works with numerous numbers of visitors will not be able to load if storage and bandwidth is not adequate.
Technology:
It makes a web host’s performance better to go with advanced technology. Technology is updating day by day.
To get the best, you need to ensure the hosting provider uses updated technology today.
Location:
Another factor is to consider if the hosting provider offers one or several server locations. These are the additional locations to keep your site data close to the user.
If your audience is in the USA, it will be better to choose a data center located in the USA. That will help to load your web pages faster.
Caching:
It’s better to look for a hosting provider who offers caching at the server level; otherwise, you will need to install a caching plugin yourself. Caching makes web pages load much faster and improves the user experience for visitors.
Response time:
A fast and updated server should respond under 200ms. So, it’s necessary to check the time to the first byte before buying a hosting. To make sure it’s fast enough, you can buy a trial version first. If it fulfils your requirement, you are good to go.
Uptime and Downtime:
It’s the time your server is ready to run.
And remember, a good hosting provider offers 99.99% uptime. So, it is an essential factor to look for before choosing a host.
SSD:
This is called a "Solid-state Drive", and it’s an updated storage technology and much better than the old hard disk drives.
So, Hosting providers working with an SSD will definitely provide fast and better service.
2. Support:
No matter how powerful a hosting provider’s server is, anytime it may face any technical difficulties, the support people should always be there. Because the longer the problem, the more it will harm your business.
So, support is another parameter to measure the quality of a hosting service provider. Usually, hosting providers promise to offer 24/7 service.
But are they really keeping promises, and do they have enough skills and resources to work with every problem visitors may face?
The following factors are really crucial to examine the support level provided almost immediately.
Resolution time:
Secondly we are now concerned about problem solving. How long a service provider takes to understand and solve your problem. If it’s a business you can’t keep your shutter down much longer as your visitors will be annoyed. So, faster is better.
Contact methods:
How can you get in touch with support? If there is variety in the contacting process it is relaxing for the user. Good service providers should offer a variety such as live chat, email, phone call, online ticket and so on if possible.
Operating time:
While choosing a web host you need to inquire if they are available 24/7. When your website is down maybe it will be the last thing you want to hear that we will be back tomorrow. So, it’s a must for a good hosting provider to be available 24/7 to serve.
Hidden support:
With prompt customer support, service providers need to provide some indirect hidden support system. If they offer any auto healing technology, auto backups, auto updates, auto blocking to malware it becomes very safe and comfortable to work with.
Support level:
When it is about measurement of support, you need to have a better understanding of your requirements. What do you need and to what extent? Support can be assessed in three levels-
Fully-managed – Service provider offers all types of support and help you may need.
Core-managed – Better for small web pages that will require little support occasionally.
Self-managed – Ideal for larger web pages with highly trained IT staff.
Responsible Support:
Support always plays a big role in hosting.
As hosting is fully connected to your site, if any challenges, there.
It harms your websites as well.
But when you find the issue inside your hosting. And unable to fix it. It can lose your site traffic, customers, and sales as long as the website suffers.
So, I want you to choose your hosting where customer support is firmly maintained.
Unless your website would suffer.
Your business would suffer.
But the hosting company sucks your money without paying attention to your business.
Good hosting providers ensure a short response time regarding customer complaints or issues. They offer a 24/7 support system and a prompt response. There will always be someone expert to handle your problem and will respond to your call as soon as possible.
As statistics shows, “7% of e-commerce conversions can be reduced if a web page response is one second delayed”.
However good technical support you may provide, this gets meaningless if you can’t attend to your customer at the very first. Then comes technical support; without having good knowledge about problems that may occur and the ability to solve them, your hosting goes in vain.
4. Security:
Security factors are the main implication of how to choose a web host. If you don’t have security you are not safe in the world of web. It’s like having valuables in someone else's hand.
As one website gets hacked, a pathway to your website is created. An American university study says that “ In every 39 seconds one hacking attempt occurs with computers that have internet access”.
Other statistics show that “every day a website experiences 94 attacks on average and bots visit your website 2608 times a week”.
So, while choosing a hosting, you need to know about the security policies and protection they provide. Only adequate hosting providers can issue an SSL certificate for your website.
So, good hosting comes with better security options.
BTW: Shared hosting environments bear more risks of security.
So, a secured website should be the first priority. Having all the factors below assure hosting providers worth-
RAID:
Redundant array of independent disks is storage used to save the same data in different places in order to protect data loss due to device failure. Hosting service providers should assure RAID facilities.
DDOS Protection:
Distributed denial of service can be described as an attack to disrupt the regular traffic of a server by making excessive traffic on that server. Hosting providers need to have resources to tackle such attacks.
Firewalls:
Assures security by monitoring incoming and outgoing traffic and blocks or permits data transmission based on some pre-selected rules. Use of firewalls by web hosts enhances web page security.
Malware scanning and removal:
If your web host scans for malware, viruses and removes them on their own with or without an extra fee they are good to go with.
SSL security certificate:
This is a protocol for verifying server identity and secure data transmission. If a web host includes and manages SSL certificates that can secure visitor’s sensitive data such as password, card details etc. they are highly recommended.
Backups:
Backups are a lifesaver. We only will understand when an important data gets deleted unsaved. While taking about backup there is some more issues-
Does the hosting provider back you up, how often do they run scheduled backups, does the web host retain your backup, Can you download it on your device, do they provide on-demand backup?
If all of these are available with a hosting provider they are good in backing you up.
Even if you fulfill all the criteria your website can not be assumed entirely secured. That’s why you need to have a third party security that is merged with a hosting provider.
5. Scalability:
It is necessary for a website to have scalability when website traffic is prone to growing or fluctuating. No issues are less important as your whole website can crash due to excessive traffic load. Basically large websites with numerous visitors may face scalability issues more often as more visitors intend to create more loads but small websites are not totally risk free as well. These are some issues web host need to solve-
Occasional traffic spikes:
High traffic is a good thing as high traffic means more visitors that can be your customer. But if you are unable to handle an amount of traffic it may encounter spikes and additionally your website may collapse.
Seasonal traffic trends (both up and down):
Web traffic trends change with season, this seems funny but it’s all about people as they are customers. Traffic goes up and down along with visitor performance. Understanding and overcoming the trend leads to success.
Long-term traffic increases:
Sometimes traffic increases and remains increased for a long time. High traffic is appreciated until it doesn’t create a problem. So the ability to handle traffic should be improvised along with increased traffic.
Adaptability:
New technology and updates come up with advancement. You can’t run new software on an old device. If you don’t adapt to the change you can’t keep pace with the rest. Suppose your website is not updated and able to handle a specific amount of traffic, if traffic fluctuates or grows your website will be loaded with excessive traffic.
6. Reliability
The hosting industry is expanding every day.
But the challenge is how reliable they are?
Because any company can have a good offer, standard website, and quality promotion on the bottom line, but if it's not reliable, you may find it exciting, but the result would always survive.
So before you choose your hosting, make sure the hosting is reliable. They are reliable to the customers; they are reliable to their support and themselves. And online, it's easy to discover the hosting nature before considering any.
7. Flexible Plans & Pricing
You almost never choose a hosting package without a suitable package. Why?
Because as you have versatile packages in so many companies, then why waste money.
Get whatever you want in your reasonable budget and invest money only where required. Today many hosting companies are offering business customized hosting.
Versatile packages for the websites.
So consider packages that directly match your website needs.
Lastly, when you are comparing hosting plans to find out the most suitable one, you need to work with pricing very carefully as it should not exceed your budget.
You need to calculate how much service you want and at which price. Additionally, it’s important to know about all the charges a service provider may demand directly or indirectly.
Affordable Price:
Price counts in every part of the business, whether it's buying a domain or hosting, running a marketing campaign, designing a beautiful website, or anything in between.
And hosting is an everyday need for a website. Think about this, investing money all year long on hosting, you have to ensure where you're investing it.
Check the hosting company that understands your price needs before wasting money on the wrong place.
Annual pricing:
Though promotional pricing seems very appealing, it can cost you comparatively more than annual pricing.
If you purchase an annual plan, you can get great deals.
But before that, you should use a trial version as you will be stuck with the plan for a year, so you can't take risks.
Renewal pricing:
When your existing plan expires, you need to renew it. Most of the time, renewal prices are comparatively higher than the purchasing price. It's a business policy. So, you need to have a better plan to cover extra expenses.
Add on service:
When you start to use a plan, you may have some basic needs; your needs increase with time. Then you need some more features from your hosting provider. But they may or may not be included in your plan. So, you need to pay some extra for added services. Generally, these add-on services don't come cheap.
Money back guarantee:
Before choosing a plan, you make sure the web host provides a money-back guarantee. Generally, companies have a policy of a 30 or 45 days money-back guarantee. So your purchase becomes secure.
Real-world cost:
Before purchasing a plan, you need to look for hidden extras.
A plan can cost you more than you think with these extras. So, before choosing a plan, you make sure they don't charge any extra hidden fees.
Cancellation and refund charges:
Finally, always check for the cancellation policy and refund.
If you buy a yearly or few years plan together, you may need to switch anytime so that you will have these features soon.
So, make sure your service provider owns it.
Why good hosting is important
A good hosting serves more than you think.
If you own a brick and mortar store somewhere except online hosting is not your matter of concern. But if you own a website or online store or are about to build a virtual platform for your business, you must know what good hosting is and how it may serve your business.
Good hosting is worth investment. Sometimes it’s more important to have good hosting than having the best products. No matter how good your product or services are, if your website performance is not good enough visitors as well as your potential customers will lose interest in searching your products and will search for alternatives.
Before diving deep, let's begin right off the bat.
Why good hosting is important for modern business
Features to determine the effectiveness of good hosting: we are going to describe some crucial features that can play a significant role to justify the importance of good hosting
Security for SEO Ranking Improvement
Websites, online business and everything online is always at a risk of security breaches. Even on the search engines, secure pages get preferences. If your site security is at risk, you may lose your ranking on search engines.
Authority and control:
With the help of a good hosting provider, you have complete control and authority over your website.
You can change, minimize, maximize, and customize your website settings according to your wish.
When you use cheap platforms to host your website, there are several conditions and rules.
Violating them can cause you to get down your website, and even after getting it back, you may lose many visitors and customers. Hosting with good providers will expand it so wisely.
Costing and payment policy:
The only price should not be the reason to choose to host your site. Undoubtedly it's crucial, but quality hosting with numerous options would never come cheap for sure.
You need to compare the price with the services you will enjoy. There is a saying that cheap is the most expensive.
At a low price, nobody will provide you with high-end services. You will need to add features separately and pay more.
On the other hand, it doesn’t mean that expensive hosting will always provide high-quality service.
They can cost more and provide less service.
So, while talking about hosting, good ones always balance the price and services in between.
- For shared hosting, you need to pay in a range of $3 – $7.50/m.
- For VPS hosting, your paying range will be $15.50 – $25/m.
- For dedicated hosting, your payment range will fluctuate between $79.99 – $290/m.
Relation between good hosting and website:
Website hosting is the virtual environment where website files and data are kept so that they can be accessed through the internet. Without websites, hosting will be meaningless, and without hosting, there will be no website.
Websites need hosting to be available to customers. To get storage and bandwidth. To enjoy security. To maintain and to solve issues, to function in a single word.
Moreover, hosting providers allow you to have a domain name for your website. If you consider your website as a house, your domain name can be considered as the address of the house to easily find.
Finally, to sum up:
Choosing a web host is actually deciding the future of your website, business brand and the visitors you are caring
about. If you become unable to choose a good one your website will face difficulties with managing visitors. And these issues will not be picked and solved easily with an unworthy hosting provider. To ensure relaxing website management, you better examine hosting providers and your requirements.
In digital platforms, your website is the face of your business. It is like the cover page, seeing these people assume your business quality.
So to make your first impression better, you need to take the help of a good hosting provider. It will help you to have a better user experience and will make it more suitable for customers as well.
I very much appreciate it. Thank you for this excellent article. Keep posting!