When taking your business online to create a well-established online presence—one of the most crucial factors to deal with is choosing the right web host.
The hosting company you choose acts as a determining and fundamental factor for the success of your online business.
What started with just 4 web hosts in 1969, there are over 126 million web hosts in the web hosting industry today. With so many options to choose from—deciding the right host for your website can seem like a huge hassle.
In this article, we’ll simplify your decision by sharing 10 Essential Factors to Consider Before Choosing a Web Host for your business. So, let’s get right into it.
1. Uptime
Uptime measures how long your website stays up and is available to your target audience. If it stays down and inaccessible more often than not—it results in negative SEO and loss of customers.
Thus, make sure your web host offers a maximum of 99.99% uptime guarantee to ensure website availability and business longevity.
2. Area of specialty
Not every web host caters to the needs of every business or customer. While some specialize in Shared Hosting, others do in Dedicated Hosting.
So, it’s advisable to understand your business requirements before choosing a web host. So, for example, if you’re looking for WordPress Hosting—look for a web host whose area of focus is WordPress Hosting, and so on.
3. Technical specifications
This again depends on your website needs. For example, if your website is highly dynamic and contains huge media and files–-you’ll need a web host with maximum hosting resources like RAM, storage space, and other technical specifications.
It’s not advised to go with cheap web hosts with minimal hosting resources—especially if you have an eCommerce site or a dynamic blog. It’s because lack of resources often results in downtimes and performance issues.
4. Page loading speed
When it comes to ensuring a good SEO and delivering an exceptional user experience–-loading speed plays a critical role.
40% of customers abandon websites that take over 3 seconds to load. This results in loss of customers and sales and negatively impacts SEO performance.
Therefore, ensure your web host provider offers optimum page loading speed with their hosting plans.
5. Add-on features
You need to ask yourself—What makes this web host special?
Look for web hosts with unique USP (Unique Selling Point) that offer additional features like free domain privacy, free SSL Certificates, multiple data centers, or regular backups.
6. Control panel
Your web host should offer you an easy-to-use control panel to facilitate website management and other tasks like setting up FTP accounts, emails, etc.
Make sure this control panel comes with a clean and clutter-free user interface.
7. Security
2021 saw the maximum data breaches in 17 years, with the highest average cost of $4.24 million annually.
Security is a major concern, and cyberattacks spare no website—regardless of size.
Hence, ensure your web host implements necessary security measures like firewalls, SiteLock, SSL, backups, and more to protect your site and data against malware, DDoS, and other cyberattacks.
8. Scalability
As your website grows and gains more traffic—your web host should support its growth and be capable of easily accommodating the growing needs of your website.
Ensure that your hosting company offers easy upgrades and quick scalability to other hosting solutions—like VPS or Dedicated, whenever required.
9. Technical and customer support
Having reliable customer support can greatly assist your business uptime and continuity.
Thus, make sure wherever you get stuck or need technical assistance with anything—your web host offers 24/7 highly accessible technical and customer support service.
10. Customer reviews
Lastly, don’t forget to check what other fellow buyers have to say about the hosting company.
Check for online customer reviews, star ratings, and even social media platforms to see how popular they’re amongst their customers and whether they’re the right fit for your business or not.
Therefore, make sure you consider the ten factors mentioned above in choosing the right and ideal web host that’s best-suited for your business.
For queries related to Digital Marketing please mail us on viworlddigital@gmail.com.
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