As you’re choosing what web hosting company you’ll go with – you have a lot of factors to take into account. And the more you think about it, the more you realize that it isn’t an easy choice. After all, most of the companies out there have hyperbolic marketing; so who’s actually telling the truth?
We’re here to give you a few ideas on what to keep in mind while you pick your web host provider!
Price
As you pick a web hosting provider, you may be tempted to primarily look at the price. And sure, all of us have budgets that we need to stick to.
While going with the cheapest option isn’t the best choice in every single situation; when it comes to web hosting, you can actually find free web hosting providers that are up to snuff. In fact, take a look at such options that we’ve come across here. You’ll find more than a few that provide good services and features, while not hurting your budget.
Focus
Not every web host out there is the right choice for every type of customer. For example, some shared plans are great for independent bloggers, but constantly growing businesses with a lot of incoming traffic may not be as satisfying.
Tech Specs And Limitations
Depending on what kind of a website you want to run, you should choose a web host that has adequate technical capabilities. For example, if you want to build a business website with a lot of content and traffic, you should know that the cheapest hosting package will probably not be enough for you.
Tech Support
If you ask anyone who knows anything about web hosting, they’ll probably tell you that this is one of the most important factors to consider when picking your hosting provider. Even with a high uptime guarantee, one thing’s for sure – you’re going to experience some issues, at some point.
And when that happens, the question is – does your hosting package include the support you need? Will you be able to contact an actual person who’s going to help you via phone? Plus, will this tech support be knowledgeable enough to deal with your issue? This is something you need to take into account as you pick your hosting.
Add-Ons and Features
This particular factor boils down to one question – what sets a particular hosting company apart from others? Do they have any kind of additional incentives, that will make their offers more attractive than the competition? Regardless of whether its stuff like their energy-saving policies, number of data centers, data backups on a regular basis or something else – know that a professional hosting company will offer more than physical servers.
If you see that they have a particular feature that makes them special compared to the rest of the pack, know that this is a company worth looking into.
Hardware
If you want to get to the bottom of this one, you’ll probably have some additional reading to do. Namely, in order to find out what kind of hardware the servers of this company run on. Are we talking about brand new, top of the line machines; or something that looks more cobbled together than expertly built?
Obviously, hardware can have a major impact on the performance of the company’s servers – and thus in turn, on the performance of your website. So, if the company does not state the kind of services they utilize on their own, be sure to ask them about it.
Customer Reviews
Naturally, no matter what the company says about themselves in their advertisement – you want to learn what others are saying about them as well. So, you’ll want to do some online research before you pick your web hosting provider. See if there are any particularly notable angry Twitter rants about their services, and try to find as many online reviews as you can.
Is this company agile when it comes to customer support? Is their average response time good enough for you? And what’s their usual course of action when they’re alerted to a problem? All of these are questions you’ll want to know the answers to before putting down any money. In fact, if you can’t find the info online; just contact the company through social media, and see if they respond1
Email Features
As we near the end of our list, we come across an area that many people don’t think about when they choose web hosting. Regardless of what web visionaries might be saying in an attempt to sound bold; email isn’t dead, and it’s not going anywhere any time soon. So, if you have a particular spam issue, make sure to pick a hosting company with adequate spam-battling solutions.
User Interface
Even the people who are extremely tech-savvy want the ability to deal with some website-related maintenance without contacting the hosting company’s support. For example, making FTP accounts, setting up your email address, and installing a content platform like WordPress; all of this is something you want the ability to do easily. So, find out if your potential hosting provider uses stuff like Plesk and cPanel, or some obscure clunky interface?
Seeing as you’re the person who’s most likely going to be working on this, you want to know what kind of software the company has in place.
Scalability
Here’s the big one – scalability. Everyone who starts up a website wants it to attract as much traffic as possible. So, you don’t want your hosting package to be holding you back from having a successful website. See if the hosting provider and their plan will give you the ability to scale up from your current plan, once your needs grow.
Conclusion
As you might imagine, there are plenty of other factors that should have an influence over your choice of web hosting provider. However, we’ve taken care to remind you of the most crucial ones here – the ones that you mustn’t forget regardless of your website’s specifics!