If you are an entrepreneur or a small business owner getting ready to launch your very first website, web hosting is an essential part of the whole process. Finding a reliable web hosting provider is a serious task. It can be tough, especially if you are doing this for the first time in your life and don’t have an army of IT pros to help you.
Hamster is here to give you a quick overview of the main aspects that have to be taken into account while shopping for a new web hosting plan.
1. Read Reviews
We have no doubt that you are flooded with thousands of ads every day. No wonder choosing a product or service based solely on advertising can be a little complicated. Therefore, one of the best ways to determinate the reliability of the service is to read reviews.
Talking about web hosting, an excellent source of reviews on different web hosting providers are blogs with web hosting reviews. This kind of blog usually offers detailed information and first-hand experience feedback. Most of the time reviews cover a variety of aspects, such as packages, pricing, features, control panel, uptime, and many more essential criteria.
Reviews give you a possibility to compare several providers and pick your TOP 3 or 5 companies.
2. Compare Pricing
After picking your TOP companies, we recommend that you take your time to go through pricing. It is important to know that sometimes the price displayed on the site is not necessarily the final one. You should read carefully all the conditions and hidden fees in small print or check the final price on the checkout page.
3. Check Features
Next, you should definitely research the features of the web hosting package. The technical details to look for are disk space, bandwidth, RAM, domains, control panel, and email account. Make sure the plan offers enough disk space and bandwidth to cover your website’s needs. But please don’t be misled by unlimited resources, because unlimited packages do not exist at all.
4. Test the Control Panel
If you want to choose the best web hosting provider, you should test even their control panel. Usually, web hosting providers offer a demo version for those who wish to check out the control panel. While testing it, keep in mind that the control panel must provide all the necessary apps, such as FTP file upload, one-click install, statistics, as well as create email accounts, add sub-domains and other essential features.
5. Pay Attention to Uptime
With so many web hosting providers in the market, an ideal uptime has to be provided by the web hosting company. The industry’s standard is to guarantee at least 99.95% uptime.
Uptime is critical because it defines your web hosting service’s availability. So the worse the uptime is, the more often your website may be unavailable.
6. Select the Best Customer Support
It goes without saying that the web hosting company you want to sign up must offer 24/7 customer support. Furthermore, simply having 24/7 support as such isn’t enough, because all your inquiries have to be solved quickly and professionally. Don’t hesitate to write to the TOP providers you have chosen and ask them directly about their customer support. The answers you will get will definitely be helpful in selecting the best one.
Moreover, choose a company which provides at least two support method, for example, live chat and ticketing system. It is even better if your favorite company can assist you via social networks too.
7. Don’t Ignore Scalability Of Web Hosting
Despite the fact that you’re a small business now, pay attention to the scalability. So, if you intend to expand your e-business in the future, you should sing up with a provider that offers many types of web hosting plans. It means that you will be able to upgrade your site’s resources or even the type of hosting easily as soon as your needs change. Therefore, it is choosing a company that provides VPS hosting too.
