Will you take the risk of hosting your blog with the web hosting company without knowing its:
- Capability
- Reliability
- Efficiency
- Technical expertise
- Support
You should never compromise on choosing web hosting service as it puts your business at high risk.
As this could potentially:
- Kill your brand`s online reputation.
- You could see a downfall in sales.
- Conversion might get affected.
- Impact SEO efforts – Google will never appreciate the sluggish site.
- Results in a bad User Experience – Which is again not liked by Google to rank your site.
With countless web hosting options available, it is important that we do our due diligence before we choose the web hosting company.
Let’s overview the critical factors we cannot ignore to evaluate before we take an informed decision to choose a hosting service for our website.
- First and Foremost – List Your Requirements.
You have to be clear and crystal on what you need.
What is the objective of the website you intend to launch? -Is it shopping portal? A company site? A news site? A Blog
Do you expect high traffic volume?
- Are you planning to host a website with lots of functionalities?
- How critical is website uptime is for you?
- Do you need lots of web space?
- How much are you willing to spend per month or annually?
- Do you foresee any upgrade plans for future needs?
These are few elementary questions you have to be ready with answers.
- Analyse The Pricing.
Web hosting companies are now offering various plans that suit the hosting needs of the customers.
Analyse the several pricing options that are within your budget and meets website objective.
- Check The Technical Framework.
What I`m referring here is software and hardware framework of the hosting company.
You are not expected to understand each and every aspect here.
All you need to know is:
- Whether it offers the user-friendly control panel?
- Security- as per industry standards.
- Email hosting options.
- E-commerce capabilities.
- Programming components supported.
- Domain name management.
- How powerful their servers are?
- Look for Scalability Options.
Now that you have the objectives of your website clear, you also need to gauge the futuristic needs.
You would want the website to grow length and breadth with numerous pages and solid content.
Or … It can be voluminous traffic to your website.
The question here is – will your hosting plan support these future needs?
Is it easy to upgrade from shared hosting to dedicated hosting space without any technical hiccups?
Will hosting plan support traffic surge your website may receive?
It is required that you do inquire in depth about the scalability and upgrade options. Else, you are bound to land in trouble waters.
At one side you see your website is growing and business prospering, on another hand, due to technology constraint, limits your capabilities to expand.
- Shared Hosting or Dedicated Hosting.
Shared Hosting is a concept where you are allocated certain web space on hosting servers. Like you, many others too would be hosting their websites of shared spaces.
Technically, all parties use same resources to keep their site up and running and fully functional.
On another side, in Dedicated Hosting, you are provided with dedicated space and technical infrastructure to host your websites. (Resources aren`t shared here which ensure better performance)
Depending on the broad level requirements we overviewed in point # 1, it will be easier for you to choose Shared Hosting plan (which a reasonably well priced) or Dedicated Hosting plan (which are expensive)
- Customer Support –Look for Promptness.
Technology and innovations make our life easy and adds convenience.
But, at times, there could be hindrances and glitches in between which may result in an unpleasant experience.
In our discussion context, we need to think how technically equipped is the customer support and how is their response time to our support queries and issues.
What if your site is down for some unknown reason? Can you afford the downtime?
Web hosting company is expected to have super responsive and technical competent support unit that would assist us on war foot.
Another thing we need check is on the alternative channels we can touch base with customer support to seek the fastest resolution to our queries and clarifications.
Live chat is a feature and telephonic support is what we should look for.
- Site Backup.
From security reasons, there is strong need to have full and up-to-date back-up of your site.
As your website gains more and more visibility in the web world, having water –tight security should be the key objective.
Surely, you don’t want your site getting hacked or compromised that will have a detrimental effect on your business.
Verify from web hosting company:
- On how often sites are backed-up?
- Is it Auto or Manual?
- Is it user-friendly or needs technical assistance?
- Can a back-up process be scheduled?
- How quickly is restore the backup version?
- Control Panel – A Dashboard to Control, Monitor and Modify.
Control Panel is like toolkit from where you can control the site settings, monitor, configure and modify.
Having a user –friendly, easy to navigate and simple to interpret control panel is ultra important.
You should not have a dependency on web hosting customer support to monitor and change any aspects of you site as this could be:
- Build your frustration.
- Consume your time.
- Take more time to get the work done.
Look for a control panel feature web host is offering.
Without easy-to-use control panel, you would have a tough time managing the minor and major tasks of your website.
Read: Ultimate Guide to Web Panels
- What Is The Unique Offering?
Check what is the unique about web hosting service.
- Are the offering something free – a free domain name registration, domain privacy, etc
- Do they have energy efficient technical infrastructure?
- Do they promise the highest uptime?
- Free backup schedules with ample space.
If you find something that is being offered for free or discounted price, and that is important for you, then opting for such hosting company should be a good deal.
- What Others Say about Hosting Company?
How would you know what others are saying about web hosting service provider?
My method to know consumers voice is:
- To visit forums is the same niche and post a thread with the question about a product/service.
- Do a Google search and analyse the results.
- Post a question about a product /service on Q & A sites.
A little effort here and a bit of creative can save a lot of heartburn later.
You get to know the upsides and downsides of any product or service.
That’s it ! Do you have something to share which I might have missed to include
Do let me know …happy to know your suggestions on choosing correct web hosting service.
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