A website is essential for any organization.
However, for a website to be live on the internet, it must be published online, which for the majority of businesses entails locating a web hosting provider.
Furthermore, any hosting provider won’t do. Your site’s performance, security, dependability, and popularity could all be impacted by your choice of web host. Stated differently, selecting the incorrect supplier could spell disaster for your web project even before it gets off the ground.
Choosing the Ideal Web Host for Your Requirements
With so many web hosting companies available, it’s simple to become confused or, worse, make a snap decision that you’ll later come to regret. There is probably a best web hosting company for your requirements even though there isn’t a single best web hosting company.
These are the thirteen factors to consider while selecting a web hosting company.
- Trustworthiness
Regular website outages will cost you both in terms of lost revenue and a tarnished reputation in search engines like Google.
Uptime: This is the provider’s assurance that your website will be accessible over the Internet. Select a web host who guarantees an uptime of 99.9% or above and who keeps their word. An average monthly downtime of 0.1% corresponds to roughly 43 minutes per month.
Hardware failover: Certain configurations can assist guarantee that your website continues to function while the problematic components are being replaced when hardware fails in a server. Seek for a web server that specifically employs RAID-10, a redundant storage architecture that offers acceleration in addition to redundancy.
- Excellent Round-the-Clock Assistance in Your Language
Sometimes you’ll need assistance. When you do, your web hosting provider ought to be ready!
While exchanging tickets or emails can be convenient, there may be a delay in response, particularly for incomplete requests. For urgent matters, it’s critical to be able to get in touch with your web host via phone or chat without having to wait on hold for a lengthy period.
Getting good responses on the first try and being able to communicate in your preferred language at all hours of the day and night (since your website never sleeps!) are equally crucial.
- Safety
Installing strong security measures is essential since hackers are always seeking for ways to get access to your data and compromise websites. A sincere web host need to suggest:
Web Application Firewall: Your primary line of defense against viruses, malware, and cybercrime is a firewall. Even if your program is outdated, an efficient firewall can assist stop hackers from taking advantage of weaknesses in your website.
DDoS protection: Distributed Denial of Service, or DDoS, is a type of cyberattack designed to overwhelm servers by sending them more requests at once than they can process. A competent host will arm themselves with the tools required to fend against attacks of this nature, safeguarding both themselves and their patrons.
Anti-malware safeguards: In addition to firewalls and DDoS defenses, servers must to undergo routine checks for malware, viruses, and hacker activities.
Brute force protection: To protect you against unauthorized “guests,” brute force protection sets a restriction on the number of unsuccessful login attempts.
Using two factor authentication, you can increase security by setting a backup password that can only be accessed by a different device, like a smartphone.
Automatic updates: WordPress and other content management systems release updates to enhance functionality and close security gaps. It is ensured that new security measures are implemented as soon as they become available with automatic updates.
- Bandwidth and Storage
The quantity of storage that you have on your website determines the amount of material (files, photos, videos, databases, and pages) that can be on it as well as the number of email that can be stored. The amount of monthly visitors your website can handle, the number of downloads or movies they can stream, and other factors are all related to bandwidth.
A few gigabytes (GB, or 1000MB) of storage should be more than sufficient for small to medium-sized websites. More storage and bandwidth will be required if you intend to build a sizable eCommerce website or one where users regularly post, download, or stream content. Disk space will also be a key factor if you wish to store a lot of emails or set up separate mailboxes for each employee. A web server that provides infinite bandwidth and storage is an excellent option for people who want to expand without worrying about reaching their limit. But exercise caution! In order to ensure that their systems aren’t being abused or misused, hosts typically add a “fair play” clause in their acceptable usage policy. If you’re thinking about hosting a really large website, get assistance from the web host in selecting the right hosting package for your requirements.
- Security via SSL
Security for visitors is also important!
Ever notice any websites that begin with https? The “s” denotes the presence of an SSL certificate, a security feature that guards both the website and its users.
In order to prevent hackers from intercepting and reading the information that visitors to your website exchange, SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encrypts it. The other advantage of SSL is that it raises a website’s search engine ranking. Make sure you have an SSL certificate because websites without one are now displayed in the address bar of Google’s Chrome browser as “not secure.”
Nowadays, the majority of trustworthy hosting companies include automated SSL certificates—also known as AutoSSL—in their hosting packages. This is what your host ought to supply!
- Restores and Backups
You will need a fast method to recover your work without having to start over in the event that your website is hacked or that you inadvertently erase a crucial file. The future security of your online projects depends on automated daily backups of your databases, emails, and webpages, together with an easy-to-use restore mechanism.
The number of unique backup copies that are kept is determined by backup retention, which is another crucial consideration. Your backups won’t help if, for instance, you need to go back to a version that was created ten days ago but your host only offers backups that are five days old.
Lastly, backup copies—also known as external backups—must be created on computers other than the ones hosting your primary websites. This is especially crucial to prevent scenarios in which an issue with your primary website also impacts your backups, potentially leading to total data loss.
- Service for Site Migration
Do you currently have a website hosted someplace, but you’re thinking about changing web hosts?
Moving your website from a different hosting provider can be intimidating. To make the process easier for you, make sure your new web host offers a completely managed migration solution.
Once you give a reputable web hosting provider access to your existing provider’s account, they should be able to complete the migration for you in a fair length of time. Your website, email, databases, and anything else crucial should ideally be moved by them. Prior to committing, make sure you have a clear grasp of the expense and work involved in migrating the website.
- No Cost Domain Name or Transfer
For a website to be found online, it needs a domain name.
When a web hosting plan is purchased, a hosting firm frequently offers a free domain registration or transfer. Although it’s not required, registering your domain with the same company that hosts your website will usually make managing your services easier in the road and could even result in cost savings.
- Expert Email
Expert email addresses (@yourdomain.ca) are a vital marketing and communication tool for your business since they showcase your brand with each message sent.
Some web servers may include one or more business email accounts as part of their hosting packages, while others may charge extra for them. Try to choose a web host that offers email support as part of their web hosting package.
To ensure that your emails don’t get up in your clients’ junk mail, you should also confirm that your provider continuously checks the reputation of its email system. This is in addition to the standard email service. Additionally, you should confirm that your email is protected by a reliable anti-virus, anti-spam, and anti-malware system.
- Execution
A four-second load time on a page costs you 25% of visitors. Every second a guest must wait is an indirect advantage to your rivals!
When selecting your future host, you might want to take these two things into account:
Type of storage: This is where your data is kept and then provided to your users. Compared to Hard Disk Drives (HDDs), Solid State Drives are far faster and more dependable servers. Consider an SSD to be a bigger, quicker version of a USB flash drive. Because SSDs don’t have any moving components, they last seven times longer, use less energy, and break down less frequently than HDDs.
Caching: When used properly, specialized acceleration technology can speed up website loads by up to 100 times and significantly improve website speed. The methods used for caching differ based on the provider, as do the outcomes, therefore confirm that your web host’s selection is supported by real performance benchmarks.
- Standing
Take advice from your forebears!
Google+ and Facebook are the most popular rating sites, so they’re usually the best places to start. However, ratings aren’t always as clear-cut as they seem. When comparing reviews on less well-known websites, use caution because these could have been purchased or swayed by commissions or kickbacks given to the owners of the comparison website. Generally speaking, this can be prevented by depending on rating services like Google or Facebook that are hard to manipulate.
Unfavorable reviews are also a wealth of information. See how the business handles customer complaints when you can. Do they attend to the worries of the client? Do many of the complaints center on the same issue? This will provide you an idea of the company’s pain issues and the quality of customer service and assistance provided.
12. Cost and worth
When determining the value of a web hosting deal, consideration should be given to the features and quality of the offer relative to its cost. It’s helpful to compare prices taking into account both the provider’s introductory and renewal prices.
Web hosts frequently use introductory pricing to draw in new customers by offering a cheap initial fee. With this tactic, also known as onboarding, a client can “test the waters” of a specific host without having to shell out a ton of cash. For the first three years of the contract, several suppliers provide a lower price.
Price of renewal: This is the amount that will be billed at the time of renewal. Make careful to evaluate the long-term worth of a web hosting company’s service and be cautious as these expenses can more than triple with certain providers.
Unexpected costs: Certain businesses may impose setup, customer support, or domain transfer fees. Some will charge more for security, backups, and other services.
Currency: If you’re in Canada, be sure to find out if prices are quoted in US or Canadian dollars. Some businesses may say they are, but they actually charge in USD, which means you will pay 30% more.
- Dedication to the Ecosystem
A server powers a website, and servers run around the clock, 365 days a year. That requires a substantial amount of energy!
In the modern world, energy efficiency is something that every organization should consider. You may reduce your web hosting’s negative environmental effects in two different ways.
Clean renewable energy: No greenhouse gases or other pollutants are produced by the system that runs the servers.
Carbon credits: A hosting company can purchase the corresponding quantity of green energy to offset the amount of CO2 and greenhouse gasses produced in order to reduce the carbon footprint of their data centers. Although it’s an improvement over nothing, it merely aims to offset the pollution the corporation produces rather than stop it from happening in the first place.
You won’t have to depend on chance to select the ideal web hosting company for your requirements if you follow these recommendations.
Check out the web hosting packages offered by 4GoodHosting if you’re beginning a new project. These have been carefully designed to maximize the potential of your email and website, drawing from the experiences of more than 30,000 small and medium-sized enterprises in Canada.