When you are getting ready to launch your first website, choosing the most suitable web hosting service is one of the most crucial decision. Choosing most suitable option for a website can be difficult even for experienced developers, given that a large number of hosting companies provides different types of services and features.
In this article, we are going to discuss different factors to keep in mind while choosing a web hosting service as well as different types of web hosting services with their advantages and disadvantages so you can decide which option suits best for the requirements of your website.
While choosing any web hosting service provider you need to keep several factors in mind.
Lets go through some important Factors to look for.
Uptime: Servers downtime can have a negative impact on your online business, sales, and incomes. However, these days, are rare chances of your website going down as most hosting service providers guarantee 99.99% uptime.
Even if it goes down, you can contact your hosting service provider and can get compensation.
Page loading speed: Slow webpage loading and information processing can drive people away from your website and can harm your online business.
Your hosting server must have a high speed internet connection that quickly loads the page. Unfortunately you only find out exact server speed when you actually use it.
You should not expect amazing loading speed in Cheap hosting options. Higher the price, the faster the page loading. But getting good loading speed does not cost you much either.
Flexibility: Web hosting services plans may be needed to upgrade or downsize according to changing needs of the website.
It is better to choose a hosting company that gives you an option to upgrade or downgrade your when you need.
Usually the best approach is to start with a shared hosting account and move on to a dedicated server later on if required.
Bandwidth and Traffic: You should keep your bandwidth according to the amount of traffic your site gets. You need high bandwidth to be able to handle a high traffic otherwise your server may crash.
Most of hosting providers may promise you unlimited bandwidth but may give you access to limited bandwidth and charge you more money if you use more bandwidth.
You need to aware, clear about how much bandwidth is included in your plan and how much your server using it.
Customer care service: Customer care services are very crucial in a hosting plan. While traditional communication means like phone and email are still most popular.
Yet it is better to choose a hosting provider who gives you 24*7 live chat support with their technicians and engineers who may resolve any technical issue in the website or answers your question and doubts in minutes instead of hours.
Choosing hosting plan type
Before choosing a web host, it’s important to decide what type of web hosting you need, whether it’s shared, VPS, dedicated, or cloud hosting. Here we are giving you an overview of different types of web hosting services.
Shared Hosting
Shared Hosting means your website will be sharing a storage space and other resources of the server with a bunch of other websites on the same server.
Pros
It’s the cheapest option available for hosting and can be started with as little as $3.95 a month.
Not much technical hassle required as security, upgrade, and configuration are managed for you.
Easy for beginners and users with less technical experience of web.
Cons
Server Resources are shared with many other websites, that can decrease loading speed and make your website slower.
Less secure, average performance, lack of server control for users.
Difficult to scale up dew to limited storage and bandwidth.
Best suited for
Small basic sites with static or fixed content like blogs, personal sites, and small startup sites.
Virtual Private Server Hosting
VPS is similar to shared hosting in that your website shares a server with other sites, but it creates a virtual environment that facilitates its client like a dedicated server.
Pros
More affordable than dedicated server.
Faster, more secure, better performance, better control over the server with the option to customize the hosting environment according to your own needs.
VPS hosting can scale up its storage space and other server resources according to the increased size of your traffic.
Best Suited For
Small business, e-commerce websites and larger personal sites.
Dedicated Hosting
Your website is stored on a single physical server dedicated to your own personal use. You have total right on server resources and full control over its configurations.
Pros
Whole server is dedicated to yourself.
Having dedicated resources results in faster speed and great server performance.
Its also highly secure and you have full control over server configurations.
You will get 24×7 best Quality Customer Support on the priority bases from your hosting company.
Cons
Its highly expensive.
You will need technically skilled manpower to maintain and optimize the server. The whole server is your responsibility which means if any issue arises in the server, you have to fix it.
Best Suited For
large enterprise website with very high traffic, where speed and security are very crucial.
Cloud Hosting
Cloud server is made of interconnecting different computers using cloud computing technologies. All these computers adds up to the resources of overall cloud and acts as a single machine.
This allows multiple servers to work together to handle high traffic levels or spikes for any particular website.
Pros
Cloud hosting is extremely reliable because it draws its resources from multiple different servers – if one server goes down, the other servers fill the gap.
Its is flexible and scalable, so it can grow with your website – if your site needs more resources, just add them. You aren’t limited to the physical constraints of a single server.
Its a cost efficient option since you only have to pay for resources you use.
Cons
Technical knowledge is needed to manage cloud hosting. Its difficult for beginners to understand and start. Even Developers will need time to understand it before using it.
Cloud hosting is secured against hardware failure, but there can be some software-related vulnerabilities in it. Overall, this point is arguable.
Best Suited For
Cloud hosting is a great option for any size business, particularly given its flexibility and affordability. However, to use it you do need to have a good technical understanding of it or you will need help from someone who does have it.
Conclusion
If you’re starting out with your first website, it would be wise to start small with a reputable shared hosting plan. You can always upgrade and migrate your site to VPS, dedicated, or cloud hosting later as your site grows.
Choosing a hosting service should be looked at as an important long term decision as your future business depends on it. Keep the different factors about hosting services in mind and make an informed decision.