Selecting the good Hosting Service for your Website
To be live on the internet, every website requires a hosting company who can store the website files and images on their servers. It is not advisable to have own web servers as it is very expensive to build and maintain one for your own website. There will be different types of hosting plans available with the provider for different website needs. Some hosting companies also offer free domain name for the customers when they sign up for one of their hosting plans. Hence, before deciding on the service provider and the hosting plan, try to understand different aspects of the web hosting, so that you can make the right choice that is appropriate for your business.
Let us consider the various aspects of web hosting :
Understand your hosting needs
Don't jump onto conclusions right away because you need to understand the hosting requirements before concluding on the type of plan. The amount and the service options depend mostly on the bandwidth and the type of support that is required for your website. If your website is for personal use having small blog posts then initially you can opt for shared hosting plan which can be upgraded later to a higher service options. Always check for the details how much traffic the web hosting plan allows for your website. Business websites expecting too much traffic need to go for higher plans because websites exceeding their bandwidth limit need to pay extra for every you don't want to receive pay extra bills for exceeding your bandwidth limit.
Reliability
Not all hosting services are reliable and fast as many of them make false promises about 99.9% server uptime upfront but fail to keep it later. The acceptable percentage is 99.5% and above and anything below this number should not be considered. Having frequent server downtimes is not good for websites especially for e-commerce based businesses because when the server is down, your website becomes unavailable for the users. Hence, when deciding on the hosting provider it is important to check if the services are reliable and trust worthy.
Support for technical aspects
Some websites need secured server hosting such as SSL as they collect sensitive customer information such as credit card data in their business transaction. While other business websites need support for database transactions, one-click shopping cart, dedicated IP and other special software upgrades. There is also a possibility that some commercial hosting services do not allow few technical things to install on their webs servers. So make it a point to check if the hosting company is supportive of all the technical aspects that your website needs.
Check for robust features
The hosting service that you select must have option for adding multiple domains, server upgrades, and regular data backups. Inability in providing any one of these aspects may cause inconvenience in maintaining the website continuously for the users. Shared servers are usually sufficient for regular websites and blogs but complex sites require better security features with higher servers. If you anticipate traffic growth for your website in future, better look for hosting providers who are flexible with their service options.
Price is also one of the important aspects when selecting the hosting providers. Some popular companies charge more for their services but fail to provide the promised features as per their agreement. Hence, selecting the right hosting provider is not about finding the popular one, but choosing the best one that fits your business needs.
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