Recommended Hosting – Choosing a Web Host That will Meet Your Website Needs!
As longtime website owners who have also been in this business for a while now, the recommended hosting question is one we often hear a lot of:
“Which is the best web host you would recommend for us?”
To be honest, there is no simple answer to this question. It is like asking which is the better dog breed between a Doberman Pinscher and Shiba Inu.
The right answer depends on a whole range of factors and will vary from one person to the next. Size preference. Aggressiveness. Intelligence. Weather adaptability. Suitability for apartment living and so on.
Similarly, finding a good company to host your website can be a daunting and overwhelming process. The quality of hosts can vary considerably, and the last thing you want is to get stuck with a bad provider as this could mean slow site performance and contending with security issues.
Instead of furnishing you with a list of recommended hosting services for you to make a pick from, we will approach this differently by instead outlining the things you should be looking for in a web host to determine the one who is best able to cater to your unique circumstances.
Because what works for me is not guaranteed to work for you, and the hosting needs of Company Y may be different from those of Company Z.
Plus, there is always the chance of recommending a web host now only to find out the quality of their hosting has become bogus months later.
“But you said Host X is great!!”
With that disclaimer out of the way, let’s get straight to it.
Identify your Hosting Needs
Understanding your hosting needs is the most important thing you need to start thinking about because without doing so, even the best web host in the world will fall short.
Here are some questions you should ask yourself as you set out to look for an ideal hosting company:
- What type of website are you building? Is it a blogging website, portfolio website, organizational website etc.?
- Do you have any specific needs? Do you have eCommerce needs? Are you looking to host one website or multiple websites? Will there be lots of URL redirects? Do you want email as part of the package?
- What kind of platform do you intend to use? Is it WordPress? Is it Joomla? Drupal, Magento or another builder?
- Do you need special software like Java, PHP, .Net and so on to code your website?
- What is the volume of traffic you have in mind? If it is an existing website, assess the current amount of traffic and make a realistic prognosis for future traffic levels.
- Are you an average user who doesn’t need much control or do you intend to make advanced installations and test different configurations? By opting for shared hosting, for example, you will not enjoy as much control of the server as you are likely to get with dedicated hosting.
- How important is site speed to you? If your site runs slowly, is that likely to be a minor inconvenience or big, big problem?
- What happens in the event of downtime? Do you lose visitors and/or income too? You need to be clear on what the impact of your website going down will be. This will have a huge bearing on the hosting environment you decide to settle for.
- What type of content forms the bulk of your website? If it is media-rich content like images and videos, for example, storage space will be a big deal in your recommended hosting plan.
Other Considerations to think about
In addition to the above, the following web host features will help you determine the best match for your specific needs.
Cost of Hosting
The price of website hosting is nowhere near uniform.
If you are a new website owner, you may want to go with shared hosting as it is the most affordable among the different types of hosting – Shared, Cloud, VPS, Dedicated.
While you are comparing prices, don’t just look at the initial sign up cost and ignore the renewal charges. You will find that most shared hosting providers sell their shared hosting plan at very low rates but make a killing at the time of renewal.
It has become a norm in the industry to charge more for renewals so don’t let this bother you much. However, what you want to be sure of is that you are not getting ripped off. While there is no avoiding the higher renewal fees, you can always change hosting providers every two or three years to save some money.
Server Reliability and Uptime
This is one of the most crucial things to consider when shopping for recommended hosting providers. It is paramount that a web host server is able to operate around the clock to ensure websites are available every second of every day.
Nobody wants their website to suffer downtime even for the shortest duration, so it is highly important that you choose a web host that is running powerful servers with good hardware and a stable network.
When choosing your hosting provider, aim for a minimum uptime score of 99.5% because anything short of that is unreliable.
Other factors to evaluate with respect to reliability include bandwidth, RAID-configured hard drives, and daily site backup.
Datacenter Geolocation
A lot of customers don’t know this but the geographical distance between your target audience and the datacenter hosting your site has a big impact on the site load speed. The shorter this distance, the better.
So then, what about companies whose clientele comes from far and wide?
Businesses with a global audience should consider using a content delivery network as this replicates their website in multiple geo-locations with the aim of boosting performance.
A CDN allows your business to cater to a very high number of customers quickly and efficiently than a traditional hosting option is likely to. So, if you are looking to serve customers around the globe, make sure the host can make CDN integration easy for you.
Control
Web hosts do not offer the same level of control, and this could also be down to the type of hosting you choose. For instance, shared hosting does not give you as much control as dedicated hosting.
Regardless, a good recommended hosting provider should be able to give you the necessary access to the things you need.
Many hosts provide a control panel that includes backend functionality, probably more than most website owners need. However, it is better to have more control for you never know when you might need it.
Upgrade Options
If you are just launching a new blog or website, it would be prudent to start off with a shared hosting plan. The logic here is that you will be able to save money on your hosting bill as your blog or website grows.
Just so it’s clear, a shared hosting plan can sufficiently cater to a WordPress site of not more than 50,000 unique visitors provided it is well optimized.
If you are expecting your website to grow in the foreseeable future, it is worth considering the upgrade options available to you at the time of purchase. If you envision adding more disk space, memory capacity, processing power and more security features, then a dedicated or VPS server would make more sense.
For these reasons, it is important to discuss the upgrade issue when initially setting up your web host account.
eCommerce Options
If you want to host an eCommerce website with the usual features such as online payment options, automatic shipping support, automatic taxes and so on, it is important to make sure the recommended hosting provider supports these features.
Also note that you are behooved to have an SSL certificate for your web store in order to guarantee your visitors and customers security of their personal information.
You can learn about SSL Hosting here.
WordPress – specific Hosting
Most websites these days are built on the WordPress platform so it would be apt to give this a mention.
The thing is, you don’t have to opt for WordPress hosting to run a WordPress website. You can choose something else – a shared Linux hosting server with PHP, for example – as this can also run WordPress.
WordPress hosting is most ideal when you need special WordPress-related services such as WordPress optimization, emergency WordPress patching, virus removal etc.
As well, make sure you understand the level of freedom your selected host allows for WordPress plugins. Some web hosts limit the amount of plugins you can use since they conflict with their hosting servers, while others allow you total freedom of what you can install.
WordPress plugins have a very important role to play in the functionality of your website. Therefore, it would be a big loss for you if you are hosting with a provider who has restrictions on what you can and cannot install.
Site Backup and Recovery
Websites are prone to crash every now and then for one reason or another so backups are one of the key considerations when shopping for a proper hosting solution.
There are two factors you should base your decision around when evaluating your backup options:
- Mean Time Recovery (MTR) – This refers to the time it takes to restore a website or application following a failure or other occurrence which might affect a website. A security breach, for example, equipment failure, or even human error.
- Recovery Point Objective (RPO) – Ability to recover a website to a particular point-in-time prior to the incident that affected the website.
Some website owners can bear their website being unavailable for days as backups are retrieved and the website is restored. For others, being unavailable even for 10 minutes is simply unthinkable.
Site backup and recovery is very important, so if you are the kind of client who cannot afford to be offline for long, this is something you need to talk to your web host about, including the costs of recovery involved.
Choose a solution that fits you best, whether that is minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour, or a weekly backup.
Refund Policy
Every hosting company worth its salt today has a refund policy in place or trial period during which you can use their service and assess whether or not it is right for you.
Some providers do not require credit card information during this period and will only be needed if you make the decision to continue with them, following which you will need to upgrade to your preferred plan.
If you don’t think you two will be a good fit, make sure to cancel your free trial before the expiration of this window, otherwise they will bill you for the whole trial period. If you have any doubts about this, you can always inquire beforehand.
While we are still talking trial periods, it is also advisable to choose a web host with a practically lengthy trial plan. This will give you ample time to evaluate your selected plan.
Customer Support
Lastly, we have customer service, another important factor when evaluating your recommended hosting provider.
Everyone wants great customer service, so make sure you find a team with a reputation for quick response time. Obviously, this will depend on the gravity of the issue. Some matters may take quick resolving, others might require you to wait for a couple of hours. But it should be within a reasonable timeframe.
Good customer support should be helpful, not unknowledgeable, evasive or showing lack of care. As well, there should be multiple avenues through which the host can be reached – phone, chat, or online ticket.
Keep these things in mind when shopping for recommended hosting providers and you should be able to find a good match depending on your website requirements.