8 important factors to consider before choosing a web host
Settling on a choice on which web hosting provider to choose can be extreme while every one of the organizations out there are promising 99% uptime, Support, unlimited resources and so forth. So let’s look into some of the important factors that we ought to consider while picking up a hosting provider.
1. Cost:
This the aspect most of us will look at first when choosing a hosting provider. Usually we have an urge to choose the cheapest hosting provider by only considering the cost. But this isn’t necessarily the best idea since you rely on your site to make money. Always take a closer look at the features that each host provides, and then compare prices.
Even though price is high up on our list, try hard to not make it a deciding factor, or a deal-breaker. Most of the web hosting providers offers attractive hosting deals during signup and even for our first payment. However, the renewal charges often more than triple. Consider such costs for upgrades and host changes when choosing your provider.
2. Security:
The next most important factor while choosing a web hosting provider is the server security. Even though website security has a lot to do with the way we build and develop our website, a secure webhosting helps us by keeping potential hackers at bay. Nowdays most of the webhosting providers implement firewall rules and network monitoring processes to avoid harmful traffics.
3. Refund policy:
These days all web host companies have a refund policy or trial period and during which we can try the hosting services and decide whether to continue or not. A hosting company that provide this feature can greatly help reduce our costs.
With free trials, we can safely test out the hosting plan and opt out if it doesn’t fit our website’s needs.
4. Server reliability/Uptime scores:
Unreliable or dated hardware and weak connections can cause our website to be offline more often. A great way to find a company’s ability to keep our website up and running is by looking at its uptime scores. Companies that have reported annual scores of 99.5% or more are often worth considering. It’d be wise to avoid companies with scores below 99%.
Almost all the hosting providers has Service Level Agreement (SLA) which include a certain amount of scheduled downtime per year in order to perform maintenance on the systems. If the availability of a system drops below that in the signed SLA, a hosting provider often will provide a partial refund for time lost. Always choose a provider that provides this feature.
In addition to making sure your site and data are accessible at all times, it’s also important to make sure you have a trusted and secure hosting solution as well.
5. Customer Service:
Customer service is another thing which is worth considering before signing up for a web host account. Try to choose a host that offers live support to their clients, 24/7. See what kinds of different ways we can contact them when we need support – email, toll-free phone, chat, and so on.
Always choose a provider that gives us good and responsive support either via live chat or telephone. That way, we can immediately resolve our website issues. Give priority to companies with an in-house customer support department. They have a better grasp of the company operation compared to outsourced customer support service.
Always go through the customer support reviews on social media platforms such as Facebook or on forums to get a better idea of the quality of their support team.
6. Availability Of Site Backups:
Backups are essential for a website. Even if we provide all security measure that we have our website will face some kind of crash, failure, virus, or hack that will take our website down. In such cases a bckup of our website can help us solve the headache. That’s where a good backup policy comes in handy and good web host provider should be able to restore our full site with minimal downtime.
Please check whether they conduct regular full backups, if we can manually backup our site via the control panel, restore the backup files our self or do we need the support staff to do it. If our webhost takes backups regularly then we don’t need to worry about all those things. So it is very important to consider this fact before you choose a webhost.
7. Customer reviews:
This is one of those factors that will help us to choose the right one. We can do a Google search of some hosting provider to know what their current customers are sating about them. We can also get an idea of the time they take to respond for an issue or are they easy to contact for support.
Most of the web server hosting providers claim on the websites the opinion of customers/clients about them. So we must read their reviews about the hosting company that what they liked or disliked about them as they can change our fate.
8. Ability to upgrade your server:
Mostly as a fresher we choose or it is recommended to purchase a Shared web hosting plan. By this way we can save some money and we eventually we can expand our website. In such cases we’ll need an upgrade in future. Always choose a hosting provider that allows both upgrade and downgrade at the same time.
Consider such costs for upgrades and host changes when choosing your provider. A hosting provider that allows you to upgrade your plan will be a lot more useful than having to find a new host and migrating your entire website.
Apart from these there are many factors to be considered while choosing a right provider but we have mentioned only a few. Remember that if you spend a few extra days testing potential choices before deciding, it can save you a lot of money and time in the long run.