If you run a business, you need a website. But before you can find it on the Internet, you must publish a website. So, you have to find a perfect web hosting company as well as a perfect web hosting plan to publish your website.
Any hosting company will not do this! Choosing the wrong host can affect your business site’s popularity, reliability, security, and performance. In other words, choosing the wrong web hosting company could cause you to fail your online project before it even starts.
Here are the 13 factors to consider before choosing a perfect web hosting plan.
- Reliability
If your website goes down regularly, you will lose visitors and potential customers, negatively impacting your search engine ranking, such as Google. So, at first, two things are considered to choose them.
Uptime: Choose a web host company that guarantees an uptime rate for your website of 99.9% or more, and make sure that it meets its commitments at all times. Justify their uptime data from past records.
Hardware redundancy: In server hardware failure, specific configurations can ensure that your services continue to operate until the problematic hardware is replaced. At the storage level, a structure called RAID-10 provides redundancy and acceleration. Disk RAID is highly recommended for your chosen hosting provider. Ask your hosting provider, whereas they have RAID 10 Disk with your chosen hosting plan before buying.
- Support available 24/7 in your language
Your web host should be there when you need them for help. Email or ticket exchange can be convenient, but delays can be longer. Being able to contact your web host via live chat or phone is essential for getting quick responses.
It is essential to be able to communicate in the language of your mother tongue. Otherwise, the risk of communication errors increases considerably.
- Security
Security is an essential part of protecting your website from hackers. Any serious host must offer:
Web Application Firewall: A firewall is your primary defense against cybercrime, malware, and viruses. An effective firewall can prevent cyber hackers from exploiting particular vulnerabilities in your website.
DDoS Protection: A DDoS ( Distributed Denial of Service ) is a cyber-attack type that aims to overload the servers that host your site by flooding them with simultaneous requests. A hosting company must be equipped with tools and countermeasures to protect its servers against this type of attack.
Malware Protection: Beyond a firewall and DDoS protection, servers should be regularly scanned for malware, viruses, and hacker activity.
Protection against brute force attacks: Hosting servers should be equipped with brute force protection software to protect your passwords against successive login attempts.
Two-Factor Authentication (TFA): TFA Adds an extra layer of security by requesting a second password on a physically separate device, such as a mobile device.
Automatic updates: Software like WordPress receives security updates almost every week. Therefore, it is hard to be able to deploy these updates manually. Hosting Servers should have an automatic system to activate new security measures as soon as they become available.
- Storage and bandwidth
When you go for a website, storage refers to the disk space used by your website’s files and emails where you can store. It is generally measured in gigabytes (GB), and 1 GB is about 1000 photos of medium quality. Bandwidth affects how many visitors your site can accommodate per month, as well as how many downloads they can make or how many videos they can stream.
For small to medium-sized websites, a few gigabytes (GB) of storage should be enough to meet your needs. For larger sites where visitors frequently upload, download, or stream, you’ll need more storage and bandwidth. If you want to store many emails or create mailboxes for all of your employees (and there are many of you), disk space will also be a significant factor. A provider with unlimited storage and bandwidth can be helpful. But beware! An unlimited storage policy is often subjected to a “fair usage policy,” which dictates the allowed type of uses.
- SSL security
Perhaps, you have noticed that some website addresses start with https. The ‘s’ means a security measure in place to protect both the website and the visitors, known as an SSL certificate.
SSL encrypts the exchange of information between your website and your visitors so that cyber hackers cannot intercept and read it. SSL also has the advantage of improving a website’s ranking in search engines. Google’s Chrome browser now shows websites without an SSL certificate as “insecure” in visitors’ address bar, so make sure you have one!
Most serious hosting providers now include automated SSL certificates with their hosting plans, often referred to as Free AutoSSL. Make sure your web host supports them!
- Backups and restores
If your site attacks hackers or if you “accidentally” delete an important file, you need a better solution than starting from scratch. Automatic and regular backups of your website, database, and emails are essential to ensure your online projects’ future. Not only is it important to be able to access backup copies easily when needed, but it is also critical to have access to multiple backup copies so that you can go back several days in case of a problem.
Finally, backup copies must be saved on a remote backup server other than those hosting your site (often called external backups) to avoid the worst in the event of failure or generalized problems.
- Site migration service
Do you already host a website with a provider, but you want to change your host?
If your website is already hosted elsewhere, migration can be complicated. Therefore, it is important that your new web host can help to transfer your site’s content correctly.
A qualified web hosting service provider should be able to complete the migration for you within a reasonable period once you provide them with access to your current provider. Ideally, you’ll want them to migrate your website, emails, databases, and anything else that matters. Ensure you have a clear conception of the cost and effort required to migrate the website before committing.
- Domain name or free transfer
Every website requires a domain name for it to be found on the Internet.
Few hosting companies will often provide a free registration or transfer of a new domain to purchase a new plan. Although it is not compulsory to register your domain with the same provider that hosts you, this choice often makes it easier to manage your services and often saves you money in the long run.
- Business email
Professional email (@ yourdomain.com) allows you to promote your business with every message sent and is an essential communication tool with your clients and colleagues.
Some hosting providers include one or more email accounts with your plan, while others may offer this service to you at an additional cost. Consider opting for a web host that includes the email service in its service offering.
In addition to the email service, it is also important to ensure that the host offers a reputation protection system for its email servers and effective protection against viruses, malware, and spam.
- Performance
You may lose 25% of visitors if a page takes 4 seconds or more to display. Every second delay in seeing your site helps your competitors.
Here are two important factors to consider when choosing your next web host for better performance:
Storage: This is where your data is saved. Although there are several types of drives (HDD, SAS, SSD), SSD type drives are much faster than other types of hard drives. SSDs have no moving parts, fail less often, consume less power, and are average seven times faster than traditional hard drives.
Caching: Specialized acceleration technology will help websites load up to 100 times faster if properly configured. Make sure they have caching software (LiteSpeed Cache) as an addon with the hosting services.
- Reputation
Learn from those who came before you! Their advice can be helpful and can often be found online.
To get started, find your provider on Google and Facebook. Be vigilant by consulting comparisons of hosts on sites that are not known to you. Often, the results displayed are mainly based on the commission offered to the comparator operator and are not an indicator of quality. This problem can be avoided by following rating systems that cannot be easily tampered with, such as Google or Facebook.
Negative reviews say it all: Check out how the company responds to customers when they are unhappy. Do several of the complaints relate to the same subject? Is the company responsive when it comes to public responses? This will help you better understand the responsiveness of the provider’s management as well as the quality of its services.
- Value
The value of an offer takes into consideration the quality and functionality of the service according to its price. When considering the price of an offer, it’s important to consider not only the start-up price, which is often reduced but also the renewal price.
Start-up price: It is standard practice for web hosts to attract potential customers with a greatly reduced initial cost. This strategy allows customers to launch their projects while minimizing costs.
Renewal price: This is the price you will be charged at the time of renewal. Often, a renewal price can increase dramatically. Be vigilant and make sure you calculate the long term value of a web hosting business.
Hidden Fees: Some companies charge for installation, customer service, or domain transfer. Others charge for backups, security, and more.
- Commitment to the environment
A server operates 24/7/365. It takes a lot of energy. All businesses should consider energy efficiency. There are two different ways to mitigate the environmental impact of a server.
Clean, renewable energy: The system that powers the servers does not create greenhouse gases or other pollutants.
You won’t need to rely on luck in choosing the best web hosting provider for your needs with these pointers.
