Take into consideration the current size of your company and its potential growth. When choosing a web hosting plan, it is essential to keep the future in mind and system accordingly. If you don’t have big demands in terms of traffic volumes, shared webspace is, in general, a good starting point because it is cheap.
Analyze in detail what are the technical services and the “tools” available with the plan
Make sure that the webspace and hosting plan you are choosing has the necessary technical tools for the management and functioning of your website. For example, cPanel, FTP access, statistical analysis, email support and a variety of other back-end tools.
Pay attention to the operating system available with the plan typically with Linux or Windows. The industry standard is certainly Linux, but if your site uses custom tools developed with other languages you may need a Windows server.
Check that the service you are purchasing offers acceptable security tools. Security is particularly important if your site is tied to online commerce or collects user data. Firewalls, malware detection tools, SSL certificates are some of the terms that you will get to know very well.
A last important check regards the presence of the backup service of the webspace, the database and the mail. Even if your hosting offers you a series of high-level security measures, you should always be able to remedy an emergency or disaster recovery. If your provider provides a good backup service, you will be able to restore your site quickly. The security profile offered by your hosting provider and your webspace is significant. For a proper analysis of the hosting service as you visit webpagescientist.com.
Security web space
Check the other technical characteristics of your plan: disk space, disk characteristics (SSD), bandwidth, CPU, etc. Without going into too much detail, we invite you to compare at least two values: the storage space but above all the bandwidth.
Storage space is the amount of hard drive space allocated to your web pages, images, videos, databases and other data. Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be transferred between your site and your visitors; in other words, it is an index that measures the ability of your server to manage the “traffic” generated by your website.
The amount of bandwidth used by your site will be determined by the amount of traffic you will receive, as well as the amount and size of the hosted content (images, videos, etc.). With the same number of visits, a site with many pictures and videos will require much more bandwidth than a website with text only. Some plans offer unlimited web space and bandwidth, while others impose limits.
As we have seen before, always pay close attention to these offers: often when you hear about “unlimited bandwidth”, it is rarely “truly” unlimited. You should know that, for packages of this type, the disservices and compromises are often evident. In general, these types of hosting plans are much slower than packages that apply limits on the bandwidth assigned to each plan. In cases where the bandwidth is limited, we advise you to always inquire about what happens if you go beyond the limit assigned to your plan.
Provider reliability: Uptime and SLA
In addition to the features and limits associated with your plan, the hosting provider’s reliability statistics are also important. Obviously, you want your site to be operational all the time. Even a few minutes of inactivity per day can generate lost revenue and a lousy user-side experience. No provider can guarantee 100% uptime, but many companies boast uptime of 99.5% and above. Try to avoid hosting companies that report less than 99%.
For some plans and providers, you may also hear about “SLA”.
The term SLA is linked to the concept of uptime but specifies a real guarantee for the customer. SLA stands for “Service Level Agreement”. For that type of plan, the provider undertakes to guarantee a certain level of service (for example, 99.99% of network uptime). If at the end of the contract, this level has not been respected, it will be our right to request a refund or an extension of the duration of the deal, according to the provisions of the agreement itself.
How does technical support work?
If your company cannot rely on an internal technician or developer, we recommend choosing a provider and a plan with quality technical support. Some hosting providers do not provide any kind of support. In these cases, only a support forum is often available to allow users to help each other or interact with administrators. This type of hosting is usually the cheapest one, but the management and experience you will experience could be frustrating if you are not an expert.
So think very well about what kind of support you need:
- Do you need 24or7 assistance or is support during office hours sufficient?
- What are the contact channels?
- Is the telephone support provided for the hosting plan you are purchasing?
- And still, the support by email or via chat is acceptable for your business?
- Do you have to pay extra for support, or is it included in the plan?
Understand and compare the costs of the different web spaces
Once you find a hosting plan that meets all your needs and your budget, make sure you fully understand the costs, payment methods and warnings. Most providers offer two different rates monthly and yearly for each plan. The annual fee is undoubtedly cheaper, but you will have to pay a year in advance. So if you choose the yearly rate, make sure that the provider a proportional refund if the service does not meet your needs.
Many hosting providers offer web spaces at a meagre promotional rate when they first sign up. After the first billing period, the plan you have chosen will be renewed at the stock price, so check that your budget is in line with these costs.
Make sure you don’t buy features that you won’t need. Hosting providers tend to group many types of services and products into prepackaged and sometimes expensive packages. Check the cost of add-ons and extra services. Some hosting providers, for example, charge an email management fee, while others include it in their base rate. Beware of free or too cheap services, as we have seen before many times they hide pitfalls. When you read the reviews of the various hosting providers, always use a “critical eye”.
Feel the opinions of other users and read reviews
If the provider you are choosing is national and important, search the web for the most recent and impartial reviews to be sure that the service provided is consistent with the offer. You need to pay close attention when you inquire on Google about the “hosting” topic. You will find that this is a particularly “contaminated” field.
In fact, some of the best search results related to this topic, for example, those about keywords like: “The best webspace” or “The best hosting providers” are managed by the hosting companies themselves or by websites that want to make money with programs affiliate services related to hosting providers. As in all things, it takes a “critical eye”.
Conclusions
There are many complicated aspects to consider when choosing a webspace and hosting provider, but it all starts with how your website is made, your needs and your knowledge.
