The first, and maybe the most important, thing you need to do when setting up a website is to choose a hosting provider. This will be your website’s home for many years, and you want to ensure you get the best host possible. Unfortunately, there are so many options that need to be clarified. This is especially true if you are new to having a website.
We hope you’ll be more clear before you finish this article. We will cover why choosing the perfect hosting provider is so important. Beyond that, we will break down the process into the most critical steps to help you start as soon as possible. Let’s get started.
Why Your Hosting Provider is Important
Think of your website as a building. It is essentially the representation of you that many have to rely on. Location is everything that makes your home a place where it does all you want it to. Consider if you work out of your home. This is basically what your website represents: your business. If you rely on physical customers, you don’t want to shop in an unknown swamp or remote jungle area. Physically, you don’t want your front door blocked by a wall, or you don’t want only one shelf to hold all your merchandise.
Your website host will influence how fast your site runs, how secure it is, and many other essential factors that make it succeed or fail. By understanding the importance of a good host and knowing how to choose one that meets your needs, you will empower yourself to make the choice that best meets your needs and those of your future customers.
Types of Hosting
There are many different types of hosting, and it is essential to know each to make a good decision. While there are free hosting sites, we aren’t going to discuss those because of the ability to customize them. These are often very limited and don’t meet the needs of someone serious about succeeding. We will also avoid talking about the self-hosted option. This option requires you to understand things like coding, and most people seeking to manage a website aren’t well-skilled in IT matters. With that said, the most popular hosting choices you will encounter are:
Shared
This is often the least expensive. It involves sharing a server with numerous other individuals. Depending on the server, this can be anywhere from a dozen to several thousand. Shared hosting can be a good one for those just starting.
Virtual Private Servers (VPS)
This option also involves sharing a server with numerous other websites. The difference is that the central server is partitioned into individual sections, allowing for more bandwidth. This means your website can handle more traffic than a shared server.
Dedicated
With this server, you are not in competition for resources with other websites. This is your private server. If you are trying to accommodate 100,000 or more visitors a month to your website, this is a slightly more expensive but more logical choice.
Managed WordPress Hosting
Many large corporations choose this option. It offers the most security, as someone else is in charge of managing the site. In addition, this creates security from hackers and system failures.
The first three options allow you to choose between managed and unmanaged websites. Your decision should be based on your confidence that you can adequately provide security from hackers and keep the site up and running consistently. Managed websites are a bit more expensive, but they are also less stressful. Now that you know what is available and why it is essential to make a choice, let’s discuss the three steps that will get you to that decision.
Making Your Choice
Making your decision about a hosting provider can be boiled down to three answering three questions: What do you need? What does the host offer? And What do others think of it?
Know Your Needs
While your budget may affect your decision, other factors must be considered. For example, will you expect much traffic first, or will you only need a small site accommodating moderate traffic? Could you be realistic here? You may envision yourself already successful, but a smaller site that can grow with you over time might be better. You also need to ask yourself how well you can handle the technical side of website management. If you are handy with this, you can choose a host without support. If, on the other hand, you are new to all things websites, you will want to look for a host that provides much more technical support. Once you have narrowed things down by asking yourself these questions, it is time to look for a website that can offer you the features you want at a price you can afford.
Compare Cost and Features
The first thing to consider is what is included in the plan tier you are considering. Please look for hosts that can offer you the most items you will need. One plan may appear less expensive, but you could pay out more if the necessities are only available as add-ons at an additional cost. Most hosting options offer several packages, or tiers, that include different start-up features. When considering the cost, determine if added support is included. Will the host automatically back things up for you, and how often will this be done? Review the plans thoroughly, and don’t base your decision solely on cost.
Whatever the plan that suits your basic needs entails, there are some givens that you should also consider. You want a host willing to guarantee at least a 99 percent uptime. If visitors can’t access your site, then it becomes useless. Downtime is responsible for customers looking elsewhere for what they want. You will also want a host that can guarantee a quick response time. Consider only the sites that offer a server response time of under 300 milliseconds.
The most excellent judge of anything, whether a product or a website host, is how well it is considered by those who already use it. Your third step is to ask.
Ask Real Users
Visit websites that offer users a chance to leave honest reviews. If you depend only on the host’s website, you will be led to believe nobody else can match them. After all, they want your business. Read as many honest reviews as possible. Make lists of the positive and negative aspects of each host you are considering. Once you have gone through a fair amount of these, you should have lists of the pros and cons of each. Here is where you decide how important each of these is to you. Looking at items that keep coming up in many reviews is essential. If these are all negative reviews, and the item appears in most of them, it may be better to eliminate that host as a choice. The greater your number of reviews, the better the decision can be made. If every review seems optimistic, you may want to question the accuracy of how the review site chooses the posting of reviews. Every host is going to have a mixture of positive and negative reviews. It would be best to determine what factors contribute to each of these and then decide how important each is to your needs.
Final Thoughts
Now that you know the choice of a host can help determine how successful your website is and understand what you need in a host, you can make a better decision. Knowing the three critical questions you need to ask will help ensure you have the most excellent chance of choosing a host that best fits your needs. Figuring out what you need and who has successfully met those needs in other users is more than three-quarters of the battle. Every website is different, and no one answer can fit all of them. While no host can guarantee your website will succeed because a lot of that will be determined by factors such as content and marketing, having a host that fits your needs will take a great deal of technical pressure off of you. This will free up your energy to create the best website to represent you. Once you have the hosting and the website active, it will be your time to shine.
