The construction and maintenance of a great website involves a lot of work. Ultimately, how you design it, the content you post, and how you make a pitch to readers can determine whether it becomes the next big thing or something easily forgotten.
What some never consider is the impact that hosting providers can have on their website’s success. There are countless hosting providers out there offering an array of benefits and features at all sorts of price points. It can be difficult to know which provider is right for you. To make things simpler, let’s talk about the key tenets you should evaluate when selecting a hosting provider.
Determine Your Needs
First and foremost, picking a hosting provider will hinge on what particular services and features you need. Because not all hosting providers offer the same features, you may have to automatically exclude certain choices. Some common considerations include storage and bandwidth, uptime, access to server functionality, whether you need dedicated hosting and domain accessibility. Different hosting companies provide different services and at different prices: for instance, a provider such as Certa Hosting may be willing to scale up or create custom packages for clients, whereas some other providers may not be as flexible.
Consider Pricing
Once you know exactly what you need and which providers offer it, you can then proceed to evaluating the cost of each provider. A simple glance at various providers will show packages that range in price from a few pounds per month to thousands of pounds per month. Depending on the services you need, the price range will vary, but there can still be different prices across providers for the same overall service. In this case, there’s a good chance that there are hidden factors impacting the overall cost, which merits additional investigation.
Research Reviews and Testimonials
Before you make any commitment to a hosting provider, you owe it to both yourself and the future of your brand to check out what others are saying. All too often, people sign contracts without really evaluating what previous clients say about the provider. With an internet search, you’ll be able to find out how others’ websites have performed with this provider. Always make sure to review independent, off-site reviews and testimonials – just to ensure they are accurate and honest. If you evaluate providers based on the aggregate of what others have experienced, you’ll likely avoid a lot of potential problems.
Various Extras
Ease of use can be a very important element when selecting a hosting provider. You’ll want to consider whether the provider offers auto-installation of popular apps and programs, cron jobs and other important elements such as SSI and .htaccess. These elements can help make the maintaining and installation of your website much easier, and will further expand what you can do with your hosting space as a brand.
Selecting a hosting provider should be a well thought-out, careful and deliberate experience. You’ll want to consider pricing, the extras provided by the company, what your needs are and what others are saying about each company before making any decision. If you follow these guidelines, then there is a very small chance you’ll ever be disappointed with the solution you choose.