In this day in age, there are many different types of web hosting platforms that offer various amenities. At first glance, making the right choice is overwhelming, and there’s no flashing arrow that shows you where to begin.
There are five essential factors to consider when choosing the right web hosting platform :
- Understand your specific needs
- Go for the established platforms
- Read reviews
- Understand the security features
- Find a service with good customer support
With these five basic tips, you will be well on your way to finding which web hosting platform will best suit your specific needs. Continue reading below to get a better understanding of how to effectively put these tips into action when making your decision.
What Is Meant by Website Hosting?
Web hosting platforms are internet service providers that essentially make it easy to create your own website. Web hosting sites allow you to create and store all of the different files necessary for running your website.
To put it in simplest terms, website hosting is the landlord of your website. You can pretty much look at this as an apartment that your website pays rent every month to stay in.
What do you do before you move into a rental property? You research the area and pretty much anything else that you can find out about your potential new home.
5 Tips for Choosing the Right Web Hosting Platform
Having a good web host for your website improves your SEO and allows you to have a better rank for your business. Even though there’s not a starting line when it comes to choosing the right web hosting platform, there are a few things you can do to make the decision easier on yourself. There are only five tips, so there’s not any reason to skip out on any one of these equally important things to consider when choosing your web hosting platform.
Up next, five tips that will keep you pointed in the right direction, and keep you on the right track to finding the right web hosting platform.
Understand Your Specific Needs
There is not going to be one “best” web hosting platform because each website will require different amenities. There will, however, be a “best” hosting platform for your specific needs.
The options for web hosting platforms are almost endless. So first, you’ll need to determine exactly what kind of website you’re going to need. Here are just a few to help get things started:
- Ecommerce store
- Homepage
- Blog
- Portfolio
You’ll also need to consider how much traffic you ideally hope to bring in through your website. If you realistically believe that you are going to be running a high traffic website, then you are going to need a web hosting platform that has the reliability to act under high traffic situations.
Also, it is a very good idea to plan out your budget for this. Think about how much you can afford to put into this website. From there, plan out how you will get an appealing return on that investment. And if you want to dive deeper into which web host is more convenient, check out the 5 best web hosting for small business.
Go for The Established Platforms
No matter what kind of website you’re running, strongly consider going with a well-known web hosting platform. The reason behind this is the fact that platforms that are not yet established still run the risk of failing entirely. Clearly, this isn’t something you want to have on your mind as you build and new website.
As a customer of these web hosting platforms, you are going to want to make sure that you are using a platform that is trusted and will continue to run at a successful rate for years to come.
Web hosting platforms that are not yet established will often offer significantly lower prices as opposed to other platforms. Though, in this specific sort of deal, trust and reliability is going to hold greater value than money. You definitely get what you pay for when it comes to bargain shopping in web hosting.
To go with an established web hosting platform, you are most likely going to have to dish out some more money. However, as a return on your investment, you are going to end up with a better chance of running a successful website and doing so in a secure manner.
Read Reviews
This is something that is pretty much relevant to any form of big purchase, but that relevance is in direct proportion to how important it is to check out reviews. Listening to real opinions from real people vs. sales pages is the only way to find honest information.
Let’s be real; there are many companies out there that are ridiculously good at making sales pages with these crazy testimonials that make their product seem like it is the best thing to happen to mankind. That doesn’t necessarily mean that their product actually lives up to their sales page.
The sad truth is, there are companies out there that will try to advertise a product like a website hosting and lure you in with these lucrative sales pages and testimonials. Then when you finally give in and buy the product or service, you realize that you have made a huge mistake.
With that being said, you should start by taking everything that you see on a sales page with a grain of salt. They may not be lying, but they may be strategically leaving certain things out. You really don’t know.
Just as a side note, this also ties into why you should shoot to go for established companies. With these companies, there is simply just a higher level of trust in which you fully understand what to expect out of your chosen package.
It is a very good idea to try to look at some third party reviews on the company and package that you are thinking about purchasing. Reviews that are posted directly on the company’s website can be helpful, but at the end of the day, there could be poor reviews that are strategically left out.
Find A Service with Good Customer Support
If you are new to running a website, chances are you are going to have many questions. This can make all of the difference in a web hosting platform because good customer support can save you so many headaches.
Look to see what kinds of support they offer. There may be live chats, email, and phone support. Live chats and phone support are awesome because they give you instant support. Email support is not bad as long as there is someone that is responsive on the other end.
Besides, to support streams, look into the support availability. Some companies only have a limited number of hours each week that they are available for instant support.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but at the same time, some companies offer 24/7 live support. If that is important to you, then you should make sure that your web hosting platform offers this support.
Is Web Hosting Different Than Domain?
Web hosting is different from domain, but you need both in order to run your own website. It was mentioned earlier that web hosting is similar to a landlord for your website. If a web host is a landlord, then a domain is your identity.
A web domain is the name that people type in the web browser that sends them your home page, or where a link takes someone after doing a search. This breaks the barrier of the IP address because an IP address is long and complicated to remember.
A domain is an easier term to remember so that people will not have to type in this long and complicated code in order to get to your site. The domain of your website is most likely going to be yourcompany.com.
Why Is Web Hosting Important?
In this online world that we all now live in, it is essential that businesses gain an online presence so that they can stay alive. With that comes the importance of web hosting because this hosting is essentially going to determine your website’s success.
Proper web hosting is going to have a huge influence on both the success of your website as well as the amount of work that you are going to need to put into this website.
High-quality web hosting platforms can potentially save you a lot of time, which you can then use to focus on other aspects of your business. That extra time that can be spent in other areas of your business will likely improve your business.
Outro
If you decide to take your small business online, picking the right web hosting platform is a very important part of running a website. Many variables come into this decision, which makes this decision intimidating to some people.
These tips about web hosting platforms that are explained above are certainly going to steer you in the right direction, which will, in turn, allow you to make the best choice that gives your website the highest chance of being successful.