When deciding on a web hosting plan, you may notice that not all services offer the same benefits. With a wide array of options and providers, it is important to do your research on the various offerings of each service and plan. While your business may have specific needs from a web hosting plan, there are some universally essential factors to consider when choosing a web host.
Uptime
Uptime is the percentage of time that your website is up and running on the servers. This directly influences traffic to your site, as visitors can only access your site when it is up. For this reason, finding a provider that offers uptime as close to 100% as possible is ideal; even half of a percentage less of uptime could have massive impacts on your traffic and thus your profits.
Speed
The speed of your website is heavily reliant on the servers it relies on. If your site takes longer than 3 seconds to load, visitors are likely to grow uninterested and leave your site. Not only this, but page load times are an essential component of search engine rankings. Make sure you choose a hosting provider that offers powerful servers and prioritizes speed.
Security
More secure websites deal with less spam and unnecessary traffic, allowing them to operate at higher speeds. Using an off-site hosting option is already one way to improve the security of your site, but you should make sure the host you choose is focused on maintaining and enhancing security. Look for features like firewalls, VPNs, and RAID. Check if your web hosting company is PCI compliant and what additional support they offer for security. One of the main things to look for is SSL certificates. SSL is regarded as a necessity now for many websites, so ensure the web hosting company you choose supports SSL and can provide SSL certificates for your website.
Bandwidth and disk space
When choosing a plan and provider, make sure they offer a plan that meets your data and storage needs as closely as possible. While many providers offer multiple plans with different levels of resources, you are still restricted to the servers they have. If these servers are ultimately not powerful enough or too robust, you may want to look elsewhere.
Scalability
When looking at scalability, you will want to consider two features: does the provider offer a diverse number of plans and allow me to upgrade as needed? And is content on my site highly scalable based on traffic?
The content delivery network (CDN) used by your provider will determine the scalability of your site, as it is what allows your content to be accessed more readily on local servers. Check and see what level of traffic scalability your hosting provider offers and their different levels of hosting plans.
Hosting environments
When choosing a hosting provider, it is essential to make sure they offer the most suitable hosting type for your business. Whether it is shared hosting, cloud hosting, or dedicated hosting your business needs, look for a provider that offers a plan to match that. Additionally, do some research and see if it is easy to change plans or upgrade a hosting plan with the provider.
Support
Regardless of the features offered by the hosting company you choose, you will eventually need support during your web development journey. Make sure customer service is accessible and available through the provider you choose, and look for a provider that offers 24/7/365 customer support.
There is a lot to consider when finding the perfect web hosting company to support your business. Regardless of your industry or demands, Hotwire Networks has secure, reliable, and fast service across a variety of hosting environments as well as being available for your business 24/7/365.
