How to Choose a Web Hosting Company

Finding the right hosting provider takes finesse. No one understands your business the way that you do. You know what you need to thrive.

When it comes to web hosting, an inexperienced business owner might focus on cost. Services range from a few dollars to several thousand every month. WordPress hosting, Joomla hosting, you have countless options to sort through.

Here are a few tips.

Figure out Your Needs

In addition to thinking about your business needs, you need to figure out your own ability. An inexperienced developer will need more hand-holding than someone who has worked on websites for years.

Make sure you work with a company that offers the level of support that you need. Every hosting provider has customer service agents. However, some companies are known for having much faster response times. If you’re operating a large, 24-hour e-commerce site, quick responses are important.

The basic configuration of your website can either be worked on by your own team or you can leave the work to your hosting company. If you decide to go with the latter route, it’s critical that you choose a great option.

Choose Your Server

Hobby websites, or ones that don’t get expect a lot of traffic, often used share servers. Each one may be running hundreds or thousands of websites. The benefit of using a shared server is that it’s less expensive than the other options.

The drawback is that you have less control. You can’t completely manage every aspect of the server. For example, you can often only upload files via SFTP or FTP. Your database access will be severely limited.

If you need more options, you can try a private server or a virtual private server (VPS). A VPS is a virtual machine. A hosting company may manage tons of VPS instances on the same box. However, your website will be faster than if you used shared services. You may have to do some tech work yourself if you have a VPS.

If you work with very sensitive information or run a very large company, you should think about a dedicated private server. No other server will be on the box. This option only works if you or someone on your team understands server management.

A cloud server like Amazon Web Services is also a possibility. It’s the most flexible option as you can easily handle unexpected surges in traffic.

Buy Your Domain

You should own your domain name. It’ll make it easy if you ever have to change hosting providers.

Find a CMS

A content management system organizes your website. The ease of using sites like WordPress is why it’s so easy to build a website right now. You need to pick your platform before you find a web host.

Most of the well-known CMS options on the market are extremely effective. They work well. WordPress is the most popular, however. About a third of the internet’s websites run on WordPress.

Whatever you choose, make sure you’re constantly updating and backing up your site. There’s no excuse for losing data. It doesn’t matter if your site is attacked by hackers, you should be able to protect it.

Work Out a Budget

You may not be able to spend as much as you want, especially if your business is just getting off the ground. Before you start approaching hosting providers, you should have an idea of how much you’re able to spend.

You’ll have to be honest with yourself when you’re estimating your costs. Every company would love to have millions of hits every month on their websites. However, there’s no need to pay for the ability to host that much traffic if your site only pulls a few views a week.

Work out what your average site traffic is. It’ll help you decide on an appropriate hosting plan. Don’t be too unrealistic.

Beware

Pricing tricks and scams abound online. If something seems like it’s too good to be true, it probably is. A common scheme is to offer very low prices for the first six months to a year before raising them massively.

Make sure you read the fine print before you sign the dotted line. You should be particularly careful if you’re working with an unknown company. Read online reviews, check out their website, and evaluate their promises.

Now you know what you need to think about before you settle on a web hosting provider. The right choice will help your website run smoothly. Time to get working!