Essential Web Hosting Features - Speed
Offering the fastest hosting experience is no longer an advantage one #webhostingcompany has over the other. Speed has become essential for staying in this arena. Let me explain why I think that.
I speak from a perspective of a website visitor. I don’t want to wait longer than a minute for a website to load - and I am one of the more patient internet users. The goal is no longer to open the website but to get the information as quickly as possible. I will skim through the content and get the information I need. To stay on the website is a more challenging quest, but I’ll talk about that another time.
With that in mind, here are the three components I would like to see in a web host’s offer:
SSD and Web Hosting
Most web hosts use solid-state drives. Compared to hard-disk drives (#hdd), solid-state drives are faster. The reading and writing speed of SSDs is around 500 MB per second. The same parameters with HDDs stand between 120 MB to 128 MB.
#ssd is also less prone to damage and consumes less power. The question is: why are HDDs still in use? Well, they are more affordable than SSDs - at least for now. Meanwhile, if you have a project where speed isn’t your primary concern, HD drives will do an excellent job. Otherwise, always look for web hosting companies that use SSD technology.
CDN and Web Hosting
Another component that can help you choose a fast web hosting service is a content delivery network. The company you choose should offer a CDN service.
领英推荐
In essence, a #cdn is a group of servers located in different geographic locations. These servers store copies of your website’s files and keep them in a cache. Once your site’s visitors request a specific file from your website (image, video, etc), they are served the requested content from the geographic location that is closest to them. That way, your website’s performance is better than without a CDN service.
Limitations and Web Hosting
The third factor that will influence the speed of your website is your web host’s policy on resource usage.
You’ve probably seen web hosting plans that offer an unlimited number of websites. Now imagine that you have only one website, and other users that share a server with you have dozens of them. If they overload the servers, that will impact your website’s performance.
With this in mind, when choosing a web hosting provider, ask them how they manage websites on their servers. Do they have limitations in terms of bandwidth or disk space? There should be some limitations that will prevent other users on your server from affecting your site’s performance.
So, why is speed important?
Why should you look for speed-focused web hosting?
Faster loading speed means good user experience.
A good user experience means good placement in SERPs.