FIVE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS TO ASK BEFORE CHOOSING A HOSTING PROVIDER

In order to make the right choice  when it comes to choosing a good hosting provider, you need to find out the various host services that exist and as well as the web hosting plans offered.

WHAT KIND OF WEB HOSTING SERVICE DO THEY RUN?

As seen in our previous article, there are different kinds of web hosting services, each with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. The most common are shared hosting, virtual private servers, and dedicated hosting.

Shared hosting services are very affordable but come at the expense of sharing server resources with other domains under your hosting provider.

Dedicated hosting services give you control of a dedicated server that exists only to host your website and its files. This is the most expensive option, typically used by big enterprises that expect high levels of traffic.

Virtual Private Servers give you the best of both worlds by combining the affordability of shared hosting, while also allocating scalable resources reserved for your use only. VPS hosting is more expensive than shared hosting but allows you complete control of your paid resources.

   IS IT SCALABLE?

There is no point settling on the perfect plan for your current business needs without considering future requirements. With hard work and any luck, your business will become an instant success and you will quickly need to add more resources to your plan. On the other hand, you might overestimate incoming traffic and need to downgrade.

Either way, it is important to choose a plan you can scale with ease. Cloud hosting scales automatically, dedicated servers are easily scalable, and shared servers are difficult to upgrade.

 HOW FAST ARE THE SERVERS THAT YOUR WEBSITE WILL BE ON?

This can be a funny question, but it needs to be asked of your host. If you don’t know what would be a “good” answer, share what they tell you with a computer wizard friend, and ask what they think about the hosts’ response. Basically, you want to make sure that the server is running on SSD drives and how much RAM will be allocated to your website. If the web host cannot, or will not answer either of these two questions, run. Don’t bother asking them any other questions, because you will be wasting your time. Every web host should have the answers to these two questions on the tip of their tongue, and should openly be willing to share this information with anyone who asks.

DOES THE WEB HOST DO DAILY BACKUP?

Website backups are very important for every webmaster. Accidents may happen, such as you may delete or change something unintentionally, your site may be hacked; you may want to reverse some changes, etc. Regular website backup can help you restore your site any time you want. So you’d better choose a web host that offers backup service on a daily basis.

DO THEY PROVIDE FREE SSL?

SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer. When you enter information on a form, everything on that form is susceptible to hackers. That means your name, birth date, social security number, e-mail address, credit card number, or any other piece of information that you submit on an online form. Without an SSL certificate on your website, all of that information is insecurely passed from computer to computer until it makes its way to the destination server. That means all computers between you and the destination server can see the information you submitted. It used to be that you would only use an SSL certificate on a site where you would submit credit card information. However, with the increase of identity theft and credit card fraud, SSL has now become the norm.

Conclusion

If your website were a house, then your web host would be your foundation. If your foundation is unstable, then your house could crumble at any time. As such, you should think longer before settling on a web host. To ensure that you are making good choices, ask yourself these five important questions, and you should be able to choose the right web host for your needs.

Are you looking for a VPS provider to help you with your business website? HOSTCMCHEAP uses high-performance SSD storage for excellent Linux and Windows VPS hosting. Our offerings also include dedicated server hosting with managed cloud platforms coming soon. Contact us today to learn more about our services or you can subscribe directly to our newsletter to get our next articles in your mailbox