A great web hosting service is necessary for every website owner, regardless of whether you’re a simple blog website or a digital business entity generating thousands in revenue a month.
It can pretty much be said that the well-being of your website relies entirely on them. After all, you’ll need enough resources to be able to operate successfully.
However, hosting is a very competitive business, with thousands of companies going head over heels to attract the attention of clients with their offer.
The final choice of which shared web hosting, VPS or dedicated server provider to go with can be an overwhelming one. Especially for those business owners that are less tech savvy and don’t know which features separate the best providers from the ok ones.
In this article, we will talk about exactly this – the main things you should keep in mind when choosing a web hosting service for your business. This applies even for those, who don’t want to bother themselves with the technicalities and just want to get their sites up and running.
So, without further adieu, let’s dive into the details.
Qualities of a good hosting provider
Reliability
Downtime (the time your website is down) is your enemy if you’re a business. Not being available means losing visitors and thus profit, damaging your reputation and so on. Which is exactly why reliability is key when it comes to choosing a hosting provider.
They should be able to guarantee the maximum possible uptime (around 95-99% is the way to go) for it to be a worthwhile choice for your business. Before going with a hosting plan, carefully consider reviews from average customers and see what they say about the provider in this regard.
Speed
In the world of e-commerce, speed was always and always will remain king. If a person visiting your website will encounter slow load times because of your overloaded servers or just a slow network in general. They will go somewhere else in an instant, it’s as simple as that.
So, it’s no surprise that decent speed should be one of your main priorities when going to a provider and choosing a hosting plan. A good way to test whether a company is lying about the speed. They provide is to simply visit one of their client’s websites.
Digital space
While a shared hosting plan is by far the cheapest when it comes to different options, it’s pretty limited in terms of resources, so it’s best to go it only if you’re a completely startup starting from scratch.
If you want to make your stamp on the industry right from the get go it’s best. You go with an option that gives you extra resources right from the start. Nowadays, hefty plans aren’t that expensive as they used to be, so you shouldn’t have any problems finding the right one.
Bandwidth
A bandwidth limit essentially measures how much traffic your website is allowed to receive over a certain period of time. As your website grows, you will be receiving more and more incoming visitors.
The last thing you want to have is a limit of how many people can reach you and potentially buy from your business. All while being either charged extra or getting your site closed if exceeded.
Sure, providers need these limitations to prevent websites from getting hefty with the resources. But they should be able to provide you with a plan that has enough to start out with and allow you to scale up easily.
Support team
Not only business owners are well-versed in the world of web development and maintenance. One of the key features which separates the best hosting providers from the good ones is being able to help you. If some issues occur as soon as possible.
While 24/7 support is becoming a new standard for hosting companies. Still not many can offer this, which is exactly what you need to look out for if you want a hosting company to always have your back.
Available features
Your provider should ensure that you have all the tools to build an ecommerce giant. This being everything from an intuitive control panel, databases, number of sub domains and so on.
There are still companies out there that only give you the bare minimum to operate. It simply is not enough to build a good website. Study the given features well, when considering different plans.
Plenty of email
It may seem like a simple thing, however, email is a key part of communications. As such, you’ll need at least a number of mail boxes available to you online. Whether it’s for communicating with clients, other businesses and so on.
Make sure you also get customizable features as well full management of them with a hosting plan.
Well-priced plans
Last but not least, is the importance of pricing itself. Is logical that if you pay extra, you should be able to get a better package, right? Well, that’s not always the case. Some providers are purposefully vague with their plan descriptions and try to attract users with extremely cheap prices.
Only after starting out with them, a person then realizes that there are practically no features. Everything additional is going to cost extra. So, look out for a provider that can give you the best value for your buck, without any hidden payments.
All in all
In this article, we’ve talked about the main qualities which can help you choose the best hosting provider for your business. Since hosting services are so popular these days, there shouldn’t be a problem for you finding the right one. It can help your business grow.
Written with the help of hostens.com – a cheap and reliable hosting provider for businesses.