Your website is like a house sitting on a piece of land. This piece of land is your web hosting service. So, basically, web hosting is rented space on a remote computer (or server) where all the content of your website exists. Usually, you are charged monthly or annual payments for access to this space.
The functionality and efficiency of your website are largely dependent on the type of web hosting services you use. This is why you must choose the best website host. However, before going into all that, let’s explore the basic types of web hosting.
- Dedicated web hosting: With dedicated web hosting, you have an entire server to yourself. You should have complete use and control of the server as no other person’s website files are on it. This makes it quite fast and secure. Large companies or websites usually make use of this type of web hosting service.
- Shared web hosting: This is the most commonly used web hosting. As the name implies, you and other people’s website files share the web hosting server. Since you don’t need an entire server to yourself, you share the costs so that this is a cheaper option for hosting your website.
- Cloud web hosting: With this service, your website appears on a virtual server that has access to many physical servers. If one server is down, another server takes its place. This makes cloud hosting service highly reliable since you will have no downtime. Virtually all servers have periods when they go down, so having the option to switch servers when one is down is definitely something great.
- WordPress hosting: A lot of web hosting providers now offer a dedicated WordPress hosting service due to the large number of websites that use WordPress. There are different types of WordPress hosting. It is essential to note that all WordPress sites don’t need to use WordPress hosting, but it is quite faster and more powerful than regular hosting since it is made specifically for WordPress sites.
Why Choose A Particular Best Web Hosting Service?
Your site’s speed, security, performance, and reliability are highly dependent on the hosting service you choose. For instance, the larger your website is, the more powerful hosting you will require. Imagine, for instance, that you have a fantastic site and a great marketing strategy that drives traffic to your website. If your hosting is of low quality, all your efforts would have been wasted. Your competitors will have your visitors in no time.
Here are some of the things to consider when you want to choose the best web hosting service for your site.
- Downtime: Downtime is a period when your website cannot be accessed online. This may be scheduled or unscheduled and for different reasons. It is essential to look for a hosting company that can guarantee you a 99.9% uptime – because every minute your website is down, potential customers are lost.
- Backup: In the instance that your website gets attacked by viruses or hackers, you’ll want to be sure that all your website files are safe or backed up. The data should also be easily accessible, so that you can get your website up and running as quickly as possible. Check if the web hosting you’re considering has the option of one-click off-site backup as this enables your content to get back online immediately.
- Security: SSL encryption gives you protection from cyber-attacks and viruses. When choosing a web host, make sure that they offer quality SSL encryption to protect not only your site but also your customers’ private information.
- Customer Support: You must choose a web hosting company that offers 24/7 customer support to answer your questions and at any time give you all the necessary assistance you may need concerning your website.
- Bandwidth: Your bandwidth determines the amount of data that is transferable between the hosting server and your website visitors. The more visitors your website has, the more bandwidth you require to keep your website functioning smoothly. At the same time, the more downloadable content you offer on your site, the more bandwidth you’ll need. You must ensure that your hosting provider offers you unlimited or unmetered bandwidth.
- Storage: Several things take up storage space on your server: your website content, email accounts, and database. The more files you have, the more disk space you’ll need. Your website hosting provider should be able to offer you as much space as you require for the smooth running of your website.
- Scalability: After some time, your website’s future growth should be considered. You should have enough server space to accommodate your website when it grows larger and when you have many more visitors than ever before. Your web hosting server has to be one that can upgrade and scale accordingly. Without this assurance in place, your website is likely to crash when your growth happens.
- Analytics: An excellent web hosting service should provide you with a user-friendly control panel that allows you to easily make changes to your website, to access different features (such as email), to use search engine optimization tools, and the like. This will significantly help in your marketing and content strategy. Therefore, when searching for a good web hosting service, always try and test the built-in analytics offered by each web hosting.
- Reputation: Finally, you will want to peruse reviews across many independent websites to know the reliability and reputation of the web host you’re considering based on the experiences of their customers.
Takeaways
The quality of web hosting you choose contributes to the success or failure of your business. This is why it is essential to get the best web hosting service for your website. When choosing a website hosting service, some of the factors you should consider are security, downtime, customer support, and bandwidth, among others.