Web Hosting Services: How to Choose the Best Service for your Website?

In a digital age marked by an always-on and always-connected populace, your company's website often serves as the primary storefront for your business. Whether it is a site brimming with the latest technology that requires an army of IT professionals to maintain it or just a single webpage with contact information, your website is where you make that all-important first impression.

Fortunately, creating a functioning and inviting website does not have to be an expensive or time-consuming project. With the help of web hosting services, large and small businesses can project a public presence that is as professional and polished as a website produced by that army of IT pros mentioned earlier. For a small fee, a web hosting service can provide your business with a domain name and publish a credible, secure website that drives customers to your products and services.

What is web hosting and who are the major players?

The basic definition of web hosting is about as straightforward as it gets: It is a service that provides the infrastructure that allows an organization to publish a website. A web hosting service generally charges a recurring fee that provides the subscribing entity with a domain name, storage for website pages, and a server that allows general access via the internet and a web browser.

There are dozens of reputable and viable web hosting services available globally; most offer a similar basic set of web hosting services, while some specialize in less crowded, and potentially more lucrative, niche markets. Choosing the right web hosting service for your small business will require research and careful consideration. Perhaps the most important factor when choosing a web hosting service is knowing exactly what your business needs from the provider.

How to choose a web host for your business?

Type of hosting offered

Most hosting providers offer multiple types of services. For a new website with relatively modest traffic, shared hosting can provide a low-cost option. But if you need more bandwidth, or need additional computing power to run software on your website, look for options like VPS (virtual private server) and cloud hosting.

You will also want to consider whether they offer managed hosting. With managed hosting, you don’t have to worry about things like security or software updates—your hosting provider takes care of all those details for you. This may be an especially good option for newer webmasters.

Even more important, look for a hosting provider that lets you switch between its service tiers seamlessly. Having the ability to upgrade your hosting plan without downtime is critical if, for example, your website sees a spike in traffic thanks to a viral marketing campaign.

Support

Responsive support is one of the most critical things your hosting service can provide. If your website goes down or you’re experiencing a malicious attack, you want to be able to talk to someone who can help as soon as possible. Every minute your website is offline can cost you visitors and sales.

With that in mind, be sure to check what support options a prospective host offers. Many have 24/7 phone, live chat, and email support, while others only offer one or two channels to get in touch. Before you sign up, try giving the support line a call to see whether the customer service team is knowledgeable and helpful.

Features

Hosting providers differ a lot in what features they offer with their plans.

To start comparing features, look at how your data will be stored. Many budget providers are using hard disk drives, which are cheap but prone to mechanical failure. An ever-growing number of hosts are switching to solid-state disks, which are much more reliable and can speed up your website thanks to faster data transfer operations.?

Another thing to look for is whether your hosting plan comes with automatic backups. Having backups of all your content and static pages is absolutely essential for recovering quickly after a server failure or hack on your website.

The software that your host provides is also worth considering. Many hosts enable you to manage your site using the cPanel software, but others have proprietary control panels that can differ in functionality. Also, be sure to look for one-click installers to help you get your website up and running more quickly.

Server Locations

The closer your host’s servers are to your audience, the faster your pages will load for visitors. So, it’s worth checking where your host’s data centers are located and whether you’ll have the option to choose among multiple server locations. Some hosts also give you the option to host your website in an environmentally friendly data center.

If you have a global audience, you may also want to consider a host that gives you access to a CDN (content delivery network). A CDN stores a cached copy of your site on servers around the world so that visitors from anywhere can experience fast page loading.

Areas of specialization

While hosting providers are generalists by nature, some companies specialize in certain types of hosting. For example, you’ll find hosts that dedicate most of their infrastructure to managed WordPress hosting, which can make sense if you’re planning to use WordPress as your content management system.?

Other hosting providers focus on cloud hosting, which offers more flexibility to scale your hosting resources up or down. Think carefully about what you need, and then see if there’s a hosting provider designed to cater to that purpose.

Security

Website security is more important than ever before thanks to the growth of cyberattacks. If your website is compromised by malicious actors, your visitors’ computers, as well as your own, could be affected. Worse, you could be liable for damage that originates from your website, even if it resulted from a security breach.

It’s also worth noting that your website can be flagged by Google and other search engines if you share an IP address with compromised or spammy websites. So, even if your website isn’t directly affected by a breach, your traffic could suffer from choosing a host that doesn’t take security seriously.

So, it’s important to carefully scrutinize the security features that different web hosts offer. Some hosts have closely guarded data centers with 24/7 performance and threat monitoring to protect your website. Others take a much more lax approach and leave it to you to manage your website’s permissions.

Conclusion

If you pay attention to these tips, you will certainly have a lot more confidence when dealing with how to choose the best web hosting. Even so, it’s always worth remembering the most important piece of information: there are several different website hosting services and you have to deeply understand your needs to hire the type of plan that best fits your profile.

The good news is that, nowadays, the providers themselves are more and more aware of this, so they already offer packages targeted to different segments. Even so, do good research, remember all the factors that we brought in this post, and start creating your content!