Whether you are a small, localized business or a global enterprise, having a reliable and highly effective website is paramount. With more consumers choosing to do their shopping or find services on the Internet than ever before, businesses simply must have a good website. The definition of a ‘good’ website is a combination of a number of major factors that need to be taken into account.
There are also plenty of reasons that it is really important to choose the right web host service first time, not least because it can be difficult and problematic to change to another web host company. You can spend weeks and even months developing great content, building pages and adding features and plugins to your website before discovering that your chosen hosting provider is preventing your website from achieving its potential.
In this post we will explain the top 8 factors to consider while choosing a hosting provider.
Price
This is probably the most obvious consideration to most of you and is undoubtedly one of the most important considerations to make when choosing a hosting provider. It’s important to remember that in many cases if you pay more with the right hosting company, you can be almost guaranteed a better quality of service and support. This isn’t always the case though, so you will probably want to look for a good balance between affordability and quality. When choosing a web hosting provider you need to consider the following costs:
· Registration and renewal of domain names
· Renewal of hosting plans
· Renewal of any software licenses you may have
· Additional technical support you may have
If you’re choosing a plan like a dedicated server then you may also have to consider extra running costs such as bandwidth and hardware.
Customer Reviews
One of the first things people will check when researching a new company to purchase from is their reputation which can be determined from looking at their customer reviews. If a hosting company has very bad reviews then you can bet they’ll have poor service, customer support, reliability, or a mixture of all! You want to make sure you’re choosing a web hosting company with good legitimate reviews from happy customers, and not a hosting company full of unhappy customers! Websites like trust pilot and reviews.io allow customers to post reviews about any company, so make sure to do your research first to avoid disappointment.
Reliability & Uptime
Another critical factor to consider when choosing a web host is their reliability and uptime. It’s essential to have a reliable network when hosting your website, as otherwise you will suffer negatively with your SEO performance and other problems will arise. If you’re running an ecommerce website for example and your website is constantly down, you’re going to lose sales as a result of customers being unable to access your site. Make sure your web hosting provider has a reliable networking infrastructure and ideally look for a network uptime guarantee which will provide you a guaranteed level of service.
Scalability & Upgrade Options
Something that many people might not consider when choosing hosting provider is the scalability that the host can accommodate, and the upgrade options they provide. Down the line you may need more resources for your hosting plan, or you might want to upgrade to a VPS or Dedicated Server. Ideally you want a hosting provider which can accommodate this and let you scale your setup with no hassle – otherwise you may find yourself in a position where you need to change hosting providers!
Security
Security is another often overlooked factor when considering web hosting providers. Although by and large most web hosts will have a high level of security, it’s still important to check that they do. Make sure that your web host has regular backups to prevent your website being lost if something goes majorly wrong. You should also try and ensure that their servers are regularly maintained to the latest version to avoid any security vulnerabilities. Finally, you should make sure that they can provide you with an SSL certificate, especially if you’re running an eCommerce website.
Features and Addons
This essentially boils down to the question – what makes this particular hosting company special? You’ll be asking yourself what extra incentive they give to make you sign up, or what makes them particularly attractive to go for. When choosing web hosts, you’ll want to look out for any extra features or add-ons that web hosting providers might offer including free domain privacy, free regular backups, SEO services, free domain names and much more.
Control Panels
While it may not apply to the type of web hosting plan you’re looking for, having a web based control panel can be a huge benefit to your hosting package. If you’re going for shared hosting or a similar plan, then you’ll want to look out for a hosting provider offering a web hosting control panel like the popular cPanel or Plesk. These control panels streamline your hosting experience by making the management of your hosting account much easier, with simple and easy to use interfaces.
Technical Support
The final point we will come to in this article is the consideration of technical support from your hosting provider. At some point or another you are bound to need help with your website or your web hosting plan, and having an experienced, friendly customer support team to assist you will make your journey much much easier. Look for good support options with fast response times and around the clock availability.
