What Is The Ideal Web-Hosting Plan For Your Business?

Once a business has developed its website and it is ready to be launched, deciding a web host becomes a major task. A web host can be described as the home for your website. Let’s say a place where your website will reside. And like you put in the effort and consider various things before choosing a house for yourself, selecting a web host should be no different. Various factors including your web hosting needs, the right type of hosting service, and technology requirements should be considered before deciding upon a host. However, one should always refrain from investing in a cheap web host. It poses problems in the later phases. These problems may include security issues and delayed website loading time. And you do not want that for your business. Therefore, before launching your website, consider all these factors and then go for a reputable web host which isn't very low priced.

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Hosting. What does this word tells you? Well, if you instantly thought of web hosting, I am sorry but we cannot be friends!

I mean who knew that there was also a thing like web-hosting! Yeah, my tech geek friends did but I always associated hosting with parties or dinners (that I managed very well btw)! I have always been named as the best host amongst my group of friends. Because they know that I am a considerate soul. From making sure they had optimum Internet speed - for instant Facebook sharing of their selfies -to arranging yummy foods, everything is taken care of at my parties.

Anyhow, I recently went to a dinner and one of my cousins (the annoying genius that he is) started speaking some alien tech language. Later, he revealed that he is planning to launch his own website. This caught my interest and I asked him to educate me. Here is the gist of the intense discussion that we two had:

Understand Your Hosting Needs

You have put in hard work and sweat to decide the content of your website including the graphics, the pictures, videos (if any) and the written material.

Now what?

Well, now you need the services of a web hosting company to host your website.

And how do you choose the web hosting type and company to suit your business, you ask?

To begin with, you, yourself should be clear about your hosting needs. For that, you need to ask yourself a couple of the type of website that you questions. The first and foremost questions that you should ask yourself is regarding plan on running. Websites can be categorized as follows:

• Blog
• Corporate site
• Personal web corner
• Webshop
• Web magazine

While the categories are not limited to those mentioned above, but you got my point right?

The type of platform and your plan to build multiple websites or not should also be decided upon before you move to the next step. Apart from that, consider the expected volume of traffic on your website as well. 

The Right Hosting Service

There is an array of web hosting services depending on the size of your business. The different types of web hosting services can be classified as under:

• Shared hosting
• Virtual private server
• Dedicated hosting
• Reseller web hosting
• Cloud-based web hosting
• Colocation web hosting
• Self-service web hosting
• Managed WordPress hosting

As the name suggests, shared hosting implies that your website shares a server with hundreds or thousands of other websites. You share the cost of using the server alike. This type of hosting is most suitable for beginners. In contrast to this, VPS is a type of shared hosting where there are multiple virtual machines for one server. This means that the number of websites per server does not exceed the 10-20 limit. However, if you wish to have an entire server to yourself to host nothing but your website, dedicated hosting is the way to be. Moving on cloud hosting is best for websites that want robust security and plan on scaling up quickly. Colocation hosting is the same as a dedicated server but here you have to make the investment in the server and house it at a web host facility. 

You are a better judge when it comes to your hosting needs. And once you have figured it out, time to look upon other things.

Features & Technology Requirements

You may have chosen the web hosting service that you think is sufficient for your website. However, one thing to keep in mind is that no two web hosting service providers will offer the same features or support the same technology (hence the different names). You need to think about the following to decide the service you want to opt for:

• Web host cost
• Reliability on the web host
• Web domain
• Webhost uptime guarantee
• Bandwidth
• Customer support

And the list goes on. But these are the most important things you should consider before you opt for any web hosting service provider.

Educate Yourself

Once you think you have settled on the features that your website will include and the technology that you will be using, it’s time to take action.

Read, read and read!

My suggestion to you would be to read as many reviews and discuss with as many people as you can before you choose a web hosting service provider for yourself. The reviews read and the discussions held will help you make a comparison between the various service providers. Then, you can better decide on the one that meets your requirements.

Cheap is Not an Option

Not opting for a cheap web host should be a point to be considered as well. A web site host is a place where your website would reside. Opting for a cheaper option would pose problems for you and your business in the end. And you will end up spending more than you wanted to save from a less costly web host. If you were to ask me, I’d suggest you choose one from the following list of reliable web hosts:

• Namecheap
• Siteground
• Bluehost
• HostGator
• InMotion Hosting

The above web hosts have been tested for their reliability and efficiency. Spend money, in the beginning, to save yourself from facing problems later!

However, it may have sounded easy to choose a web-hosting plan for your business. While in reality, the opposite holds true. There are numerous amount of factors to be considered before you take a decision. And choosing the plan that meets all your requirements is no easy game. Well, for me, nothing is! The indecisive me gets a mental block. Something as simple as getting an internet subscription to Frontier Internet packages took me ages to pick from options that were not many in number. I wonder what business owners go through while taking technical decisions for their websites.