Beginner’s Guide to Choosing a Good Web Hosting Company
Whether you are hosting your first website or your 30th, you must choose the right web hosting company to meet your needs. A web host provider provides a place to store all your website’s data and essential files. The provider also delivers that data to the people who visit your site.
Web hosting is crucial when launching your website and impacts your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. The web host also determines your web speed, security, and more. So, here is a beginner’s guide to choosing a good web hosting company.
- Understand your Needs. The first step to choosing the right web hosting company is to identify and understand your website needs. Make a list of these steps and prioritize them as you compare your list to each potential host. For instance, if you wish to launch a photography website, prioritize speed and storage. If you have an eCommerce website, you may want to focus on bandwidth and security. Also, do not forget to consider the type of support that you might need for your site. Think also about the Content Management System (CMS) you would like to use for your site.
- Subscription Period. Most web hosting companies offer flexible options when it comes to contract lengths. You may find monthly and yearly plans or discounted rates for multiple-year contracts. As such, you must think of how long you will commit upfront. The best practice is to try your new web hosting company for a few months to get firsthand experience. If you become confident enough, you can choose a more extended plan. Remember to also check the plan’s terms and conditions before signing. Some terms may allow you to move smoothly between contract lengths and plans, but be sure to ask about any relevant fees or penalties.
- Reliability and Uptime Guarantee. Uptime guarantees affect how reliable you expect the hosting company to be. Uptime is the period your website will be online and available
to users without any issues. Every web admin wants their website to be live as much as possible. As such, your host should guarantee around 100% uptime. However, no hosting company can guarantee 100% uptime. So, find out how the company handles any downtime. Having your site unavailable when you are trying to build an online presence will negatively affect your business.
- Refund Policy. You cannot predict what will happen in the future. So, the best thing to do is to review your web host’s refund policy. If you are not happy with your host or change your mind down the road, it is wise to have options. Ensure that you can cancel your plan and get a refund. Understand what your potential hosting company guarantees and what they are willing to take responsibility for. Also, ensure you know ahead of time what your deadline for a refund will be.
- Decide how much Support you Need. There will be times when you will face server issues that you cannot solve. Web hosting companies offer customer service through email, ticket, and phone. However, the time may vary from one provider to another. Some may offer 24/7 phone support, while others may offer limited hours. Every website owner would want to settle with a hosting provider that gives you excellent and responsive support. This allows you to solve your website issues immediately and keep your business running. Take your time to research a hosting provider’s support team reviews to have an idea of the quality of their support team.
- Server Speed. The world is at an age where mobile page loading speed is crucial for rankings. Users also want a page that loads within the first three seconds of clicking on your site. So, having a fast loading website is essential for your website and business. Choose a hosting provider that will offer you stable and fast server speed to ensure that your website loads fast and smoothly. Fast speed will not only improve the user experience but also help with your SEO rankings.
- Backups. Backups are essential for every website. You can never predict when you will face some crash, failure, hack, or virus attack. Although we have state of the art security measures, it is always wise to take precautions. Look for a web hosting provider with an excellent backup policy. A good website host provider can restore your site fully to avoid any significant loss.