Looking to create a website but still confused about how to choose a good hosting? You are not alone in this. Most people are faced with this dilemma and left with little knowledge where to start – thankfully, there are online resources that can help. In this article, we will quickly discuss the essentials for choosing a good hosting.
Your website’s size. Check if the size of your business is small or large? Your site will depend on it if you do not know how much space it will take, assume the number of pages. Will the site require 10 pages or much larger than that? How about pictures and videos?This is crucial since the size of your site determines the disk space necessary in your hosting.
The number of site access. Will your site get a lot of visitors? Assessing the traffic is vital since the bandwidth offered by the hosting plans differs in cost. Furthermore, every time a page loads, it will use some of the hosting server‘s features.
Small to moderate access. For moderate traffic blogs, it’s fine to host your site on shared site hosting. Most blogs are hosted on a shared server in the beginning, and once they start having a lot of visitors, they can get the plan upgraded.
Many access or traffic peaks. Sites with good hits can instantly consume lots of resources to the limit set by the hosting plan, which may lead the site to be down. This happens commonly on sites that have a big audience and advertise content on social channels. Publishing a new link in the social network can cause your site to be flooded with visitors and become unavailable if you pushed your plan to the limit. For this, you need a VPN, dedicated, or cloud hosting plan.
Virtual store consideration. eCommerce websites are recommended to have a hosting provider that offer SSL security protocol as well as a Dedicated IP. This ensures the security of customer data via encryption of information sent and received. Not having this security will put your customers’ information at risk, exposing data to malicious people.
There is no such concern if the sale is made through a third-party payment tool like PayPal since the sale will be made in the secure environment of those third-party companies. The plan will vary based on the size of the store. A few pages and products just need an ordinary website hosting; eCommerce sites need dedicated SSL and IP to meet its needs.
What is a good hosting provider?
The above points will allow you to choose the appropriate hosting plan for your website. Here are some important points when choosing a good hosting:
- Market reputation– Check out the latest customer reviews and check out the size of the company.
- Support – See what channels (call, chat, portal) and hours of service they offer.
- Management – See if the site and control panel/dashboard is easy to understand.
- Guarantees – Check if the company offers a refund if the customer is not satisfied.
- Uptime – Ensure that the company offers a guarantee of server availability above 99.5%.
Hosting plan essentials
- Disk space – Check the disk space offered in all of the plans.
- Data transfer – Check availability and the bandwidth limit of the plan.
- Platform – See if they offer Linux or Windows hosting.
- Email – Ask how many email accounts and what storage space on each account is offered.
- Extras – See if they have a website builder as well as features like private SSL and dedicated IP.
While the price is important, it must not be the sole driver of your choice of hosting. When hosting locally in Australia, you’ll find it cheaper to get au domain when registering your site and hosting it with the seller. Hosting companies offer very competitive prices, but note that price is related to the location of the server. Companies with servers outside Australia can offer cheaper plans than those that host in Australia. That’s it! Now it’s time to choose a good hosting plan.