How to Choose a Web Hosting Service for Your Website

In today's digital era, every business must have a website. In fact, it is as important as a business card, brochure or logo. But once you create websites and web pages, they have to be stored somewhere where they can be accessed by everyone, all the time. This is where web hosting services come into play.

This article will explain what web hosting is, and how you should choose the right hosting company for your business website.

Short definition

To explain the concept of web hosting services, we will use a common analogy where the internet is like a big country.

Each website must have its own land in the virtual country.

Each land has an address, so other people can find it easily.

These lands reside on various web servers, most of which are owned by web hosting companies such as GoDaddy.

The web hosting company that owns the server rents out the land for a fee.

Like finding space to rent for your startup venture, finding hosting for your website requires a bit of comparison.

How to choose a web hosting service company

There are different types of hosting plans — some designed for large businesses, others for startups with basic websites.

Depending on the nature and scale of your business, you can choose between shared hosting or 'classic' hosting, dedicated hosting, virtual private servers, or cloud hosting. Read more about the different types of hosting here.

Now, our checklist:

Server location

Preferably, the web server is located near your customer; the closer your customer is to the server, the faster your website will load for them. Load times are critical to your business, as most people will only wait three or four seconds before leaving the page.

As you review hosting companies, ask yourself the following questions:

In which country is your target audience located?

Does the hosting company have servers in that country?

If you serve customers globally, do they have servers in different countries?

By answering these questions first, you can weed out web hosts that don't meet your needs.

Reputation

Choose a reliable and trusted web hosting service. Check how long they have been operating. Do they have their own servers or rent from another company? Pay attention to the types of brands and customers they serve. All of these will give you an idea of whether they are worthy of your business.

Price

Of course, this may be a major consideration. Do they offer flexible pricing plans with different features? Choosing a monthly or annual plan, and paying only for the features you need, will help keep costs under control

Storage Room

How much storage space does this plan offer?

Make sure you get enough storage space for your needs.

You should also inquire about the process for upgrading storage if the need arises. An easy process is better, as you may need to respond quickly to a sudden spike in traffic.

Backup and Restore Policy

Are backups included in this plan or do you have to pay extra? How often does the web hosting service perform backups (daily/weekly/monthly)? And what is backed up?

Daily backups are a good practice in general — even more so now that ransomware is so common. In this scenario, hackers take control of your website and hold it until you pay a large ransom amount.

Ease of Migration

Despite your best efforts, you may change your mind about your web hosting service. You may feel dissatisfied with your web hosting company and want to move your website to another server (at another company).

Some web hosting companies make migration very difficult, for obvious reasons. So, check their migration policy beforehand.

Control Panel

Web hosting companies usually provide a control panel — basically a dashboard used by the developers or maintainers of your website. However, how much control do they give you? Do they provide full access to the hosting control panel? Involve your website developer in evaluating these features before choosing hosting.

Uptime and Bandwidth

Uptime refers to the amount of time in a day that your website is visible on the internet. If your website is unavailable, visitors will see a '404 error' which is a code for page unavailability.

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