It’s important to pay attention to the process of choosing a hosting provider because this will determine the performance of your site. If you are looking for the best hosting provider, check Hosting Foundry for reviews of leading companies that offer reliable features. You need to ask some important questions before you choose a hosting provider, and this is to confirm if they offer the features you would need for your site to run smoothly.
Here are top questions you should ask every web host to determine if they are the right host for your site.
What is your security policy?
Security is one of the most important factors you need to put into consideration when choosing a hosting provider. You need to know the measures of security applied by the company. The web host should give reliable security features like SSL certificates to encrypt connections. They should also have backup solutions so that when your data is lost you are able to restore the functionality of your site without challenges.
How is the reliability of your servers?
Server downtimes are a big letdown and you could lose business if your site is focused on selling goods and services. A reliable hosting provider should prove they have a good uptime score, most preferably 99.5% and above. There are companies that have an uptime of as low as 93%, which means you will experience problems most of the time, and you could lose traffic this way because sometimes users are not able to reach your site.
How is the speed of your service?
Good server configuration is ideal and will affect the speed of a website. One of the questions you need to ask is whether the hosting provider guarantees good speeds as promised. This question is best answered by other customers, so also take some time to go through their reviews to see the shortcomings of the hosting provider. Sometimes if you have chosen shared hosting your site is bundled together with many others and this lowers the speed for each site placed in the same server as your site. Check that the shared hosting service is not shared among many sites for each server.
How is your customer support?
Your experience with a hosting provider is as good as the responsiveness of the customer department. A customer department that is responsive and fast will help you to solve any challenges you encounter while using their service, so make sure to confirm their service is reliable.
What if I’m dissatisfied?
You also need to ask if they offer guarantees for different services. There should be remedies for clients who fail to get the quality service that is expected of the hosting provider. Do they offer refunds or will you be penalized.
Before you choose a hosting provider, take some time to learn more about the different features the company offers when you host your site with them. You should confirm if there are sufficient security measures and backups in case you lose part of your data. Also ask about the responsiveness of their support department as these are the people you will turn to when you have a problem.