How To Choose a Web Hosting Service

Last updated on August 5th, 2024 at 05:19 am

A good web hosting provider can be a great partner for your business. It can help your business go online, and take care of all technical things such as keeping your site up and running, performing regular site maintenance and upgrades, and more. This can help you focus more on growing your business. However it is important to choose the right web host to avoid problems later on. If you are wondering how to choose a website provider or looking for tips on finding web hosting service, then this article will help you. Here is how to choose a web hosting service for your business.

Why Choose The Right Hosting Service

Web hosting service is the foundation of your online business. Your website, blog, emails, and apps are all dependent on the web service you choose. Everyone needs a hosting provider that provides consistent uptime and data security at a reasonable price. If you use a good hosting service, you can work on the business side of things and avoid worrying about its technical side. Otherwise, all your money, time and energy will be wasted in just getting your website to keep running properly. Here are some of the important reasons to pick a good hosting provider.

1. Uptime – This is the single most important requirement for having a reputed web host for your business. If your website goes down frequently and is very slow, then people will leave your site and not do business with you. Even search engines will give your site low ranking, which in turn will reduce your website traffic and bring down your business.
2. Data Security – Today, almost every online business is data-driven. If your site is attacked by malicious hackers or bots then it will go down. Sometimes, even your data may get stolen. In such cases, your business reputation will suffer and it will bring down your sales. A good web host will protect your site from hackers. It will also securely backup your data, content and code, making it easy to recover in case of issues.
3. Low cost – It is tedious to run your website on your own hardware as it requires tremendous initial investment upfront. It is practical to host your website on a hosting provider that provides servers, disk space and other services to help you quickly get your website up and running. Also, they provide many different services such as ssl, emails, newsletters, blogs, etc. as packages which you can add to your site, with a click of a button, instead of coding from scratch.

How to Choose a Web Hosting Service

Here are some important tips to help you find the best web hosting company for your business.

1. Reliability

The most important factor to choose a web hosting service is its reliability. If your site goes down frequently, then it will drive away your website visitors and negatively impact your sales. It will also lower your website’s search engine rankings. So pick a web hosting provider that guarantees at least 99.5% uptime. Also, check out their reviews on popular blogs and websites to ensure that they are well-established and credible.

Bonus Read : Top 5 Server Log Management Tools

2. Customer Support

No matter how well you configure your website, there will be times you need customer support. Investigate the customer support availability as well as modes of communication provided by the web hosting company. Do they offer support 24×7? Do they offer support over phone, email, and live chat? These are standard offerings by most website providers and you must also look for opt for it. Also, look at their turn around time. If they take too long to reply to your queries, then you will have to wait when you need them the most.

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3. Speed

Fast websites provide a good user experience, increase website conversion rates and improve search engine rankings. So make sure your web hosting service provides fast loading websites. This means their internet connection speeds should be fast. Look at their existing customers’ websites to understand how fast they work. Also check their integration with CDN (Content Delivery Network) providers and support for data compression.

Bonus Read : Top 5 Server Monitoring Tools

4. Plans & Packages

Ideally, once you pick a web hosting service, you should not have to change it ever. Changing a website provider can be really painful as business grows over time.

So choose a web hosting provider that offers a wide range of plans & packages (shared & dedicated hosting) suitable for small as well as big companies, has transparent plans and packages and makes it easy to upgrade/downgrade/migrate your website. Also look for any hidden charges for bandwidth, upgrades and renewals.

Stay away from packages that have a lock-in period, even if it costs less. You do not know how your business will grow. If you are locked into a package, then you may need to pay a penalty to opt out of it.

This will help you stick to the same web hosting service as your business grows over time.

Bonus Read : How to Improve Website Loading Speed in Mobile

5. Ease of Use

Choose a web hosting service that is easy to use, has a user-friendly control panel and allows you to easily add features such as SSL/HTTPS, configure payment processing and install third-party software & tools such as website builders, WordPress, E-commerce plugins, templates and more. If your website provider is not easy to use, your team will waste a lot of time adding things as per user feedback, and in the process, lose valuable customers.

In fact, some of them provide ready made packages for WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and other popular CMS systems. This makes it easy even for non-technical folks to quickly get started and run blogs and websites.

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6. Network Bandwidth

Your website’s speed not only depends on the end user’s internet speed but also the internet speed of your web hosting provider. Every hosting package must clearly mention the net bandwidth available for your server so that your site can deliver a great user experience. Remember, cheapest packages offer low internet speeds making your end users wait unnecessarily. So pick a package with reasonable network bandwidth and do compare it with other hosting providers.

7. Data Security & Backup

Every online business today runs on data. It is their core competency. If your data gets stolen or leaked, then it can give an edge to your competitors, invite lawsuits and even shut down your business. Your entire data is present on your hosting provider.

Check your hosting provider data security back up features your site’s code, content and data. Also, check how easy it is to recover them in case of issues. You should be able to recover a small-medium website within a couple of days and a large website, within 4-5 days’ time. Otherwise, it is better to go with another provider.

8. Avoid New Companies

There are many web hosting providers that have been around for decades. If you are launching a new websites or business, we strongly recommend using one of the older services instead of jumping onto a new one, even if they offer lower pricing and better advertising. In case things go wrong, a new hosting service provider may not support you as expected. Also, they may not be able to handle your growth or their own growth for that matter. If they get a large number of customers, and they do not have the resources for it, then your websites will start facing increasing downtime and slow speeds.

The older ones have been in business long enough and have seen all kinds of issues, so they are better placed to help you. They also have a large user community who discuss problems and solutions on their forums, so that is another avenue for help.

Top Web Hosting Services

Here are some of the most popular web hosting services.

1. DreamHost

DreamHost is a popular web hosting service provider that has been around since 1997. They have grown and evolved over time to support modern websites, blogs and apps. They offer fast performance and wide range of services such as hosting, email, content delivery network, and more.

2. HostGator

Hostgator is another well-known hosting service used widely by bloggers. It offers shared hosting, VPS hosting, cloud hosting, managed hosting and even WordPress hosting. They offer free SSL certificates and data backups. They also offer unmetered bandwidth and storage, making them quite affordable. It is suitable for content-heavy sites such as gaming, video and social media sites.

3. GoDaddy

GoDaddy is one of the biggest hosting service and domain registrar. It offers free domain, SSL and email for 1 year. Thereafter, you need to pick a paid plan. It also features a web site builder at a price. It has a user-friendly interface making it easy for non-technical users to build and run sites.

4. BlueHost

BlueHost is great for hosting online stores, blogs, and websites. In fact, it is even recommended by WordPress.org site. It provides customized features for running WordPress sites. Also, it easily integrates with popular CMS such as WooCommerce. They also provide in-house website design and digital marketing services to help you get up and running. It also offers a website migration service to help you move from other service providers.

5. InMotion Hosting

InMotion Hosting provides optimized hosting solutions for popular platforms such as WordPress, Joomla, PrestaShop and Drupal. It even supports LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL/MariaDB, PHP/Python/Perl) stack to help you build custom website and online stores quickly. They even allow you to install more than 400 applications and plugins using a graphical interface, with the click of a button. So there is no need to run commands or write code to host your website.

Conclusion

In this article, we have learnt why it is important to pick a good web hosting provider, the key criteria to keep in mind while evaluating various service providers and some of the popular hosting services. If you want to host a blog, use a popular CMS such as WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla. If you want to run an online store or website, use an Ecommerce Builder such as Magento, WooCommerce, etc. since almost every hosting provider has optimized hosting options and packages for these platforms. With them, you will be able to get things done faster. Avoid using obscure platforms, and building things from scratch unless absolutely necessary. Hopefully, the above tips will help you choose the right web hosting service for your business.