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7 Things to Consider Before Selecting Web Hosting for Your Business

ConsSelecting Web Hosting for Your Business

When setting up an online business, you first need to pick a web hosting provider. No matter how great the content or visuals on your site are, a wrong web host can set you back significantly.

Web hosting involves more than just making your site available online. It can also affect the credibility of your business and profits. That’s why it’s important to research your options before choosing a service provider.

There are many companies within the web hosting industry offering different products and services. This article will cover seven points to consider when choosing a web host for your business.

1. Pricing

You must include the price of your hosting plan in your online business expenses. Note that the cheapest service is rarely the best solution. For optimal website performance, you may need to purchase a more expensive hosting plan.

Be mindful of your needs when deciding on a service package. What volumes of traffic do you expect your site to experience? Are you planning to grow your business slowly or expand it rapidly?

Remember that hosting services with more resources and features will cost more. It’s better to leave room for growth than to limit the performance of your website. Therefore, compare pricing plans and hosting types offered by different companies and choose one that best suits your needs.

Usually, most hosting plans will include extra features like a domain name subscription for the first year. Make sure to check what these services will cost you in the following years.

2. Server Uptime

Server uptime refers to the percentage of time when the server is available and operational. It is a measure of your website’s availability.

Ideally, your site should be up 24/7 since people might access it at any time. If you are building a business website, you should prioritize uptime. Having a potential customer greeted by a 502 bad gateway error upon opening your site can damage your reputation and lower profits.

Look for a hosting provider with a 99.9% or higher uptime guarantee. In addition, check whether the company has a compensation policy if it can’t deliver on this promise.

3. Loading Speed

A quick loading speed is essential to make potential customers stay before they decide to leave your site for another, increasing the bounce rate. Page loading time refers to how quickly your site displays content.

A slow loading speed can lead to a significant decrease in web traffic. Google has discovered that 53% of people will leave a mobile webpage if it doesn’t load within 3 seconds. These are important figures as mobile devices generate around 54.8% of all web traffic.

A swift loading speed will also improve your Google SERP rankings, driving more organic traffic to your site. To improve loading times, consider the type of content you will upload on your website. Larger files will naturally take longer to load, so use rich media sparingly.

When choosing web hosting, look for features that can help your website load faster, such as caching and additional bandwidth. Double-check the claims hosting companies make by reading customer reviews.

4. Scalability

When you’re building a website for the first time, it’s normal to expect limited traffic volumes. Therefore, you might choose a hosting data plan that has fewer resources.

However, as your website grows, so will the number of its visitors – especially during any promotional campaigns.

Familiarize yourself with the web host’s hosting plan upgrade policy. You may find it more convenient to stay with the same company instead of migrating to a new one.

Furthermore, you can look for plans that allow scaling up or down based on the circumstances. This can be more cost-efficient if you only expect high traffic volumes during promotions.

5. Security

If you operate an online store, your website will be storing the personal information of your customers. It is essential that the transaction process is secure and all data protection is protected.

Not only that, cybercrime actors are getting more sophisticated, so you need to employ security measures to prevent breaches. Here is a list of them:

  • An SSL certificate. SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. Having it on your website encrypts all data transfers between your server and visitors’ browsers. This way, you’ll avoid data breaches and build customer trust.
  • Protection against DDoS attacks. DDoS stands for distributed denial of service. Such attacks target websites or web applications by overwhelming them with requests until they become inaccessible. Make sure that your hosting provider has safety measures against these types of attacks.
  • RAID. RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Drives. It increases the performance of data storage and prevents single drive failure.
  • A firewall. It monitors traffic to and from the server. Having a firewall establishes a barrier that protects your website from unauthorized access attempts.
  • An antivirus. It detects malware that may harm your website.  

Check if your potential hosting provider offers the above with their plans or whether you need to pay extra.

6. Backups

The risk of losing your data is tangible even if you have applied ample safety measures. That’s why performing regular backups is important.

Check if your hosting provider backs up your website data on a different server. That way, your data will be safe in case there’s a problem with the hosting server.

In addition, check what the company’s data restoration procedure is. It may be as simple as a single click.

Backups can be manual or automatic. Many hosting companies provide automatic weekly or daily backups, depending on the plan.

7. Customer Support

A customer support team is an essential aspect of a web hosting company. It may be reachable through live chat, a phone number, or an email address in case you need assistance.

To avoid future inconvenience, find out if support is available 24/7 or only during designated hours. In addition, check what previous customers had to say about its quality.

In addition, explore the web hosting provider’s site and check out their guides and tutorials. Some of them feature knowledge bases with articles that might enable you to solve minor problems by yourself.

Finally, take the time to familiarize yourself with the control panel of the hosting service. Almost every hosting company has its own version of the control panel. Otherwise, they may feature options like cPanel.

Find out which control panel your potential hosting company uses, how it works, and if it is compatible with your device. That way you can save time-solving minor problems by yourself.

Conclusion

Web hosting is an essential part of building an online business. It allows companies to have an online presence. What’s more, it can impact your business’s credibility depending on how well your website operates.

Weigh every aspect of your potential hosting provider and compare it with the competition. Try to make an informed decision when choosing the hosting company.

This will take some time, but it’s better than running into problems after settling for a service provider that doesn’t meet your business needs. We hope our list has helped you figure out what you need to consider before purchasing a hosting plan. Good luck!

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