What to look for when you’re looking for a web hosting provider

Business Web hosting is about finding a safe home for your website, whether that’s a simple blog or large multifaceted user experience. Hosting is important because it dictates a large proportion of your customer’s experience. For instance, web-hosting servers determine if your browsers can easily access content and how often they can access it. In order to take advantage of the cloud, many businesses are turning to shared hosting. Shared hosting is where web-hosting servers are shared between multiple businesses. We have talked before about common mistakes small businesses make when choosing a web hosting provider. Here we outline some questions to ask to determine the right web hosting provider for you.

What do you need?

The beginning of any decision is to understand what you want the outcome to accomplish. The main differences between hosting plans is the speed and capacity of the hosting. Ask yourself; how many people at one time will be accessing my website? What content will they be accessing? The more people accessing heavier content, the greater capacity your web-hosting provider needs. If you have a simple recipe blog, a standard package will be fine. If, however, you’re intending to stream rich content including videos, commercial products and photos then you will want a more comprehensive solution.

Features / Add-ons

Ask yourself what this web hosting company is doing to make itself stand out. If the only standout feature is the price, question the quality of the service that is being provided. Some differences web hosting companies use to stand out:

• the fact that they have multiple data centres located in different areas around world
• they have sustainability values focused on saving energy and using renewable resources or
• they provide additional services as part of the package including data backups or privacy options.

Which of these add-ons are important for you?

Support

The key factor for most people when choosing a web host provider is the support that is included. Hosting is one of those technical considerations that go unnoticed until something goes wrong. When something goes wrong with hosting, it goes very wrong and your customers will not be able to access your website. In a moment like this, you want to know that you are able to call someone immediately and have them attention your problem. Most basic packages for web hosting do not include comprehensive support packages.

User interface

Navigating the back end of the hosting program can be difficult but not impossible. If you are slightly tech savvy, you will be able to manage many of your hosting requirements, such as setting up e-mail, through the provider’s cPanel. However, some of the cPanel’s are difficult to use. Before you commit to a web host, ask to see an example of the cPanel dashboard. If possible, take it for a test drive and see how easy it is to locate functions that you need. A cPanel should be intuitive and straightforward.

Web hosting decisions can be complicated, primarily because of the large amount of options available. Complete Cloud can work with you to get a better idea of what packages would be suitable for your business.