Are you planning to start a new blog, news website, etc. or already have a web page? Which hosting do you use? Be sure you choose a good hosting provider. But, what’s important in choosing a hosting provider? What is the best hosting for small business? Which is the best web hosting service provider? These are the questions you need to ask before starting any website.
Great hosting boils down to the 3 S’s: speed, support, and security
Hosting service is available in wide range of prices, from Hundred Rupees (few dollars) to Lakhs of Rupees. If you are planning for a simple blog, you can go small plan or if you are planning a small business, you can go for cloud hosting, VPS or dedicated hosting.
Once the digital director at Wingard Creative, Adam Berry said: “Great hosting boils down to the 3 S’s: speed, support, and security”. Before choosing a host, kindly seek for advice or compare among such providers, otherwise, you will end up losing everything. Talking about us, we also learned it in very hard way.
Here are some tips you need to consider before buying a hosting service.
Be sure about your need:
Generally, basic customer service provides the access to email, ticket and phone support. Talking about the reply or turnaround time on request will vary. Some do not care even if you call them and some are quick to response, like 24 hours phone support. Additionally, if you don’t want to manage your website, the providers can do it for you. The providers can manage and configure your site, keep it loading, keep eye on security, patch your software as needed and even backup your site.
The amount of traffic you expect:
Hosting providers generally charge based on storage and bandwidth usage. If you expect low traffic better go for limited bandwidth. But, if you have vial contents, you bandwidth might rocket up, in such case the visitors will be limited to bought bandwidth and you will lose the visitor. But, you can extend your bandwidth easily. For example: if you are planning on targeting local customers, you will be fine with any limits, but if you are planning for big, multipage website, go for dedicated or cloud-based servers.
Understand the server types:
Shared servers are the cheapest ones. But there might be 100 of websites running on a single server. This might slow down your website as the performance of your site depends on the loading time of other sites putting on the host.
Another option is VPS (virtual private user) is a virtual machine running on a box. The service providers run many VPS instance on a box, still, the performance is always better than the share services. But, if you don’t want to share your performance, you can go for the dedicated servers. As in dedicated server, that one box is all yours.
Cloud servers might be a better choice. The main benefit of cloud servers is that you can scale seamlessly. But, it is not necessary for small or medium types of business, as they run on the giant public clouds, example: Amazon Web services, Microsoft Azure, etc.
Don’t just go for unlimited offers
Unlimited storage and unlimited bandwidth are common among the providers. But, there’s a catch, they likely to add something in your terms that either throttle your performance or shut you down after a certain period of time.
Try to avoid lock-in, choose a portable content management system
Actually, most of the hosts are pretty good with it. However, the time changes, management changes, acquisitions changes, technology shifts, etc. can alter your plan. Make sure your site isn’t locked to any one host and do not forget to keep a backup in place.
WordPress could be an option. As we also use WordPress for our website and most of the people and large companies use WordPress. It is easy to use and have lots of option for modifications. Do regular updates and site backups, so you always have access to your site’s data, media, and structure.
Own you domain name
You should have control over your domain. That way you can change your provider if needed at any time.
Bottom-line, there is nothing like best web hosting for small business or anything? It depends on your need and how much can you afford. Now, you know what to do? Go and find some good providers and build something great.
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