When picking a web hosting service for your website, there are many factors to consider. The hosting price usually depends on the type; each has pluses and minuses.
This article discusses the types of hosting and aspects to consider before choosing a web hosting service.
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting is the most economical type. It’s where a plethora of sites are hosted on the same server. The hosting provider distributes server costs among multiple sites, which is why it’s the cheapest. That’s its main selling point.
If you opt for shared hosting, you’ll also share bandwidth with other sites. If another site on the same server undergoes a spike in traffic, your site will slow down significantly.
Your site could also be affected if another one on the server has its IP blocked due to unlawful activity or for another reason. While a reputable hosting provider will try to prevent this, there is always a risk.
VPS Hosting
Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting users still share a server, but they have a unique IP and a unique virtual server, which partitions their sites. VPS hosting lets you manage more server features yourself and saves you from the risk of getting blacklisted. Typically, small businesses and individuals won’t exceed the traffic limits imposed by a VPS.
Dedicated Hosting
Dedicated hosting is the most reliable and expensive kind. You have the server all to yourself. Enterprises opt for these hosting services to make sure their sites are live 24/7 and fully secure. To reduce the cost, you could resort to options like Amazon Web Services (AWS). They allow you to keep costs under control by paying as you go.
Cloud Hosting
With cloud hosting, your site is spread across several servers to handle unexpected traffic spikes. Uptime is guaranteed through the power of the cloud. It doesn’t cost much to get started with cloud hosting, but expenses will grow in direct proportion to your site’s popularity.
A company doesn’t have to be large and established to offer a decent cloud hosting package. Your costs can be quite predictable as some firms also charge a flat monthly fee.
Web Hosting: Factors to Consider
The amount of anticipated traffic is critical to your choice of a website hosting platform. Shared hosting is optimal for small sites with little traffic, but a virtual private server is a better choice if the traffic increases substantially.
Most companies want their sites to get a large volume of traffic, especially those in eCommerce.
How Many Email Accounts?
If you’re a startup with a few employees, they will each need a personalized email account. Some hosting services can provide that. In addition, you might need several generic email addresses (ex., marketing@yourdomain.com). Some providers offer unlimited emails.
How Much Bandwidth?
A cheaper hosting plan will work if you don’t expect more than several thousand visitors per month. Add up the size of your site’s media and multiply it by the number of visitors to your site to check how much bandwidth you’ll need. If 20,000 people open your 250MB site, you’ll need 5,000GB of bandwidth.
How Much Disk Space?
You need to consider storage as well. The more image files or multimedia you have, the more space you’ll need. However, most sites don’t need much, as a webpage is just a text file.
To calculate, add the number of resources in your site’s folders if you have a full site built locally. You must reckon with more space if you enable user-submitted content, like on a social network.
Hosting Services: Things to Look For
Other aspects to consider include the cost of registration and renewal, ease of use, management features, support, and cancellation.
Don’t fall for attractive starting offers of a few dollars a month. Look at the prices in the long term. You might find the rates have increased after your initial sign-up. Changing your hosting provider can be challenging. This is why you should always read the fine print and be aware of how much you’ll be paying in a year. If you aren’t sure you’ll be able to afford it, look elsewhere.
Ease Of Use
Assess the intuitiveness of the host management features. The majority of hosting services have cPanel, which is fairly user-friendly, but you still need to evaluate your own experience beforehand.
Support Services
Be aware of what support you can expect, as you will probably need some at one point. You can expect some basic assistance from most providers, but few offer specialized services, like coding.
Look at the support channels as well. Ideally, they should have chat, email, and phone support.
Canceling Your Hosting
Don’t skip the small print – you might end up committed to a long-term contract and get no refund after canceling. Some services offer discounts if you make an upfront payment. You’ll be committing to payments over a period even if you switch providers in that time.
