Thinking of choosing the right web host for your website? Don’t worry, you are not alone! We will help you with some tips to make your work easier. Just keep reading!
Before you decide when a web host is right or good for your website needs, you need to think about the three essential S’s which are Speed, Security, and Support. Note that even the cheapest monthly website hosting providers must assure you of these essential components.
You need to understand that when you take your time to choose a reliable web hosting company, you are guaranteed of accessibility of your site and security as well as support.
Choosing a web host is one of the most important and sensitive decisions you can ever make when setting up a website and so you should make sure to give it your time and effort so that to avoid future headaches.
Many business owners think that the cheapest web host is the best but this could produce a disastrous outcome.
There are many things that you need to keep in mind during the web host selection process so let us guide you through the key factors that you must consider.
1. What are your Hosting Needs?
First thing first: You must identify the needs of your business so that you can know what web host will satisfy your business needs. Now to help you narrow down your search, you need to ask yourself the following questions:
- What kind of website do you want to be hosted?
- Is the website the common WordPress or something else?
- What about support needed for the specific script like PHP?
- What special software will you need for your website?
- What is your website traffic?
These 5 and many other important questions must be answered prior to the web host selection process.
2. Technical Support
Think of a situation when things go wrong, maybe your website crashes in the middle of the night. What support can you get from the web host company?
Maintaining a website is sometimes technical and when you experience problems that you are not knowledgeable about how to solve or which need the attention of your web host company can the company be of help at that instance?
This reason, therefore, calls for you to choose a web host that will offer you’re the technical support required in a 24/7/365. The last thing you want to experience is your website going offline on weekends and you don’t have someone to lend a hand until Monday.
3. Pick the Right Hosting Package
Note that it’s not only the best package but the right one. Many small business owners think that picking shared hosting is the best way to save money, but you must understand that even though the price tag is smaller you will possibly experience slow website response time since you are allocated the same server and maybe you are many.
You need to understand that customers will not be willing to wait for your website to take ages to load. This means that your website will have a high bounce rate since customers will be navigating away from your site within the first 3 seconds of visiting it. This will negatively affect your Google rankings.
4. Availability
Availability is a term that is used in the same capacity as reliability. Therefore, you need to pick a web host that will be reliable.
This is to mean that your web host will assure you of your website online presence that won’t be affected by their server errors or go offline for longer periods as a result of day to day maintenance.
Here, you need to aim for an availability of about 99.95%. This is the highest availability that means your website will always be online.
5. Website Backup
It is normal for computers to fail since equipment also fails and human beings also die. This is a fact that can’t be denied. Your website will also be vulnerable to these issues. Maybe a hacker gains access to your website and changes some files. Or maybe your whole database gets blown up.
For this reason, you need to pick a web host that will offer regular backups so that you can still access your web pages and posts in case the worst happens on your site.
Read More: Build a Website in 5 Minutes | Web4Africa SSL Certificates | Impact of Data Centers on Cloud Hosted Websites | Nedhost Services | HUB8 standard web hosting for ₦250
Conclusion
We hope this post has opened up your eyes so that you can pick the right if not the best web host for your website needs.
If so, please share it so that you can help someone out there.
