We have a wide range of choices available to us when it comes to hosting our site, in fact there are so many options to choose from that it can actually be a daunting task to identify a hosting provider that is suitable for our requirements and needs.
Just imagine yourself visiting your favourite local coffee shop around noon only to find they are actually closed because their coffee machine is broken. A former regular customer may come back again later on that day but a new visitor would most probably find a new coffee shop to get their morning coffee. Well, just think of it as your own website: if the server is down because of an unreliable hosting service when your potential customers or readers visit your website, they might just find what they are looking for elsewhere.
If you are looking to find a home for your corporate website, there are several excellent hosting companies to choose from. However, with so many alternatives on the table, how do we establish which ones is the best option for us?
The main items on any checklist will probably seem very basic, but as usual the key is in the details. This is why a checklist needs to have a number of sub-items, and each of them should highlight the nuances and lesser known features that you need to include to your decision-making process.
Those days when you only had to take into account disk storage and bandwidth are long gone. Nowadays you need to adopt a thorough analysis of the service and the features available when making a decision on the ideal hosting for your own site.
You should also keep in mind that different hosting providers are suited in different ways to host all sorts of websites. Yet there are some common, essential factors you need to keep into consideration before committing to a specific provider.
Reliability
Whenever your site goes down, your number of visitors will also go down. When you lose web visitors, you are also losing profit, reputation, subscribers and members. Essentially, you can’t afford for your site to go down, not even for a few hours a month. In order to make sure that the hosting you are considering is reliable and trustworthy, look into how many customers they have, look for complaints and bad reviews about them on the net, check if they have a guaranteed uptime and ask other people who have utilised their services about their experience.
Customer support
You need to check how effective (and efficient) the provider is when it comes to their support when technical problems arise. Pick a hosting service that has 24/7 live support. Also, chat support is a plus, as well as ticketing via social media platforms as opposed to email. Always prioritise providers with an in-house customer service department, as opposed to an externalised one.
Security
Cyber security is the elephant in the room for small companies with basic websites as more and more are finding themselves under attacks from hackers these days. Reliable and quality hosting providers are able to protect your website utilising standard security measures.
Backups
There are so many reasons why you need to produce backups of your site. Unfortunately, so many small companies don’t consider this and forget about this essential task. However, a decent hosting provider will help you stay on top of this task by simply backing up your website for you.
Technology and key features
Going back to the coffee shop example… when was the last time you were in a coffee shop and someone tried to order for some fancy coffee they couldn’t make? When it comes to your site, ensure you can enjoy all the options and features you need. When selecting a hosting company, look into their control panel, how many sub-domains they allow, their scripting language support, look into the databases they offer, and whether it is hosted on Unix or Windows platform.
