Getting a web hosting plan is a crucial first step in establishing your online presence. It’s a challenge to choose the right plan that’s a perfect fit and every inch efficient in running your website.
You may have stumbled upon a string of offers from different web hosts offering highspeed load times, tight security, guaranteed low prices, and other promising deals. There may also be a number of technical jargons that sound “reassuring enough” to try out.
Be cautious. There are more to web hosting plans than those stated in marketing materials and product descriptions.
Read on and get to know some things you might be missing about web hosting.
9 Must-Know Facts Before Getting a Web Hosting Plan
There are different types of web hosting
Don’t just settle for the first web hosting plan you find on the web.
Knowing the different web hosting types helps you choose one that best suits your business needs.
- Shared Hosting – This type of hosting houses your website on a single server along with other websites. This means you share the same volume of resources with other users. This is best for small businesses and personal blogs.
- VPS Hosting – A Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting still offers a shared server with other clients. However, you now have a separate space and exclusive resources. This is a viable option for scaling medium-sized businesses.
- Dedicated Server Hosting – This web hosting type is ideal for enterprises with multiple websites that drive constant heavy traffic. You get your own physical server, so you have full control over the hosting environment and its resources.
- Cloud Hosting – Instead of one, Cloud Hosting replicates your data in a cluster of servers. If one of these servers encounters a problem, the other one can step in to keep the operation running.
There’s actually a limit to “unlimited”
Web hosting companies love to throw the word “unlimited” around when marketing their services. While the limitless offer is something you’d hate to miss, it isn’t completely accurate.
An unlimited bandwidth or storage offer simply means that your host won’t measure or control your usage. The amount of data you can transfer is still limited. If you exceed your allotted monthly data, your site will slow down, and in some cases, you may have to pay a fine.
Free hosting plans can cost you more in the long run
Nothing is absolutely free, or at least not in business anyway. For a personal blog, a free web hosting plan is a viable first step. But if you’re running an online business, you’ll need more resources to keep your website afloat.
Opting for a free plan won’t cost you a dime, but you’ll pay for a string of limitations and issues along the way. These risks will hinder your brand’s growth online:
- Recurring downtime
- Zero customer support
- Restricted number of pages, bandwidth, integrations, etc.
- Slow page load time
- Lack of data security
- No control over ad placements on your site
Scalability is crucial
If you plan on growing your business online, you need a web hosting plan that allows you to scale your website with ease.
Your web host should have ample resources to handle sudden traffic spikes and an influx of transactions. It should also support plan upgrades without interrupting your online operations to keep downtime at a minimum.
A dedicated VPS server would be a prime choice for this. It has flexible server features that allow you to add and manage multiple high-traffic websites.
RECOMMENDED: A Beginner’s Guide to VPS Hosting for Scaling Businesses
A 100% uptime is a myth
When the social media titan, Facebook, hit a 14-hour downtime, it lost a whopping $90 million in revenue.
If industry giants can experience such a dilemma, so can you. This is because a 100% uptime guarantee doesn’t exist. Even the most reliable web hosts refrain from preaching this offer.
Something will cause your website to crash in the future, whether it’s a sudden traffic spike or a deliberate cyberattack. This isn’t ideal but this is among the risks that you’ll encounter.
Instead of a full uptime performance, choose a web hosting provider that offers prompt tech and customer support 24/7 to solve issues right away and mitigate the effects of a complication.
A higher price is not a guarantee
There’s no guarantee an expensive hosting plan will perform better than that with a lesser price tag. This is the same for low-cost hosting options. A cheaper choice may or may not work for you.
Instead of fiddling with various prices, start with an evaluation. How much are you willing to invest? What hosting resources and features do you need? What kind of website are you running?
These should help you choose the right hosting plan that meets your business needs, no matter the price.
Data centre locations affect speed
As with brick-and-mortar establishments, location also matters when choosing your web host.
A reliable web host has data centres across the globe to ensure your visitors can access your site in a snap no matter their location.
The nearer your visitors are to a data centre, the faster it is for them to pull up your website – resulting to great user experience.
Consider where the bulk of your visitors are coming from. For example, if the majority of your clients are in Australia, it’s worth checking out hosting companies within the country.
There are also global web hosting providers, like Crazy Domains, that have multiple data centres around the world to ensure data is always accessible.
Not all hosting services include backup
A lot of things can go wrong when managing a website. The most notorious of them is data loss. A cybersecurity breach or a simple human error can wipe your website clean of everything you’ve ever worked for in a matter of seconds.
Ensure your hosting plan includes a website backup service. This keeps your data safe from corruption, accidental deletion, and other threats through regular backups. This makes it easy to restore any lost files and content and reduce costly downtimes.
No server is hack-proof
If you come across a web hosting plan boasting of a “hack-proof” server environment, leave. That’s grossly misleading. Anything that goes online is susceptible to hacks, malwares, and other cyberthreats.
Get a web hosting plan that offers quality security support. For tighter protection, install security services that helps encrypt website data and detect vulnerabilities in your system to prevent future cyberattacks.
RECOMMENDED: 7 Cyberthreats to Look Out For (+Tips to Secure Your Website)
Get only the best hosting experience
It’s undeniable that web hosting has a significant impact on your website’s performance. This is why you need to find out everything essential about it to help you choose the right plan for your business.
Use this article to help you filter your web hosting options.
For more insights and expert tips on how to set up your website, browse our Website section.
