Choosing a web host is an important decision and one that will certainly have an impact on how your website performs. It’s also a very competitive market, so it pays to shop around. What do you need to be thinking about when you compare web hosting service providers? We’ve put together 5 important points to consider, so let’s get down to business!
Website Building
Look for a host service provider that offers a good, easy to use and reliable website builder. There are many of these around, and you’ll find the easier it is to use, the more you get out of your website.
It’s certainly worth checking the small print to find out which website builder your chosen hosts might use, as this can also influence your decision.
We strongly recommend VPS Hosting
Bandwidth Provided
There’s a lot of jargon to deal with when looking at web hosting providers, and bandwidth is a word you’ll read a lot about. It’s actually quite simple: bandwidth is the amount and quality of data that will travel between your website, your users, and the internet. The higher the bandwidth, the more traffic you can handle. Talk to your providers about your website and how many users you expect to be handling, and they will provide you with as much bandwidth as you require.
Storage Capacity
You will read of offers of unlimited storage from a wide variety of web hosting service providers. Be careful and read the terms, as these may come with certain restrictions that could impact on the efficiency of your website. However, if you are running a small business, do not be convinced that you need to pay for huge amounts of storage. Unless you are running videos and pictures that take up a lot of space on your website – and a lot of them – then you will only need the minimum of, for example, 1GB of storage. Be sure you only pay for what you need! For more information on this and other aspects, check out Top5Hosting as they have info on the best in the business.
FTP
Your web hosting provider will also give you a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) which is the most-used method of uploading files to your website. You need to ensure the FTP you have access to can handle files of the size you need to upload, or you will run into problems. Talk to providers about this, and also check with them if you can also have access to an online file manager, which may allow you to upload files when on the move.
Support
Our final point is this one: look for a service provider that offers you genuine 24-hour support, and that promises a sensible service level agreement – this will guarantee you a limited downtime over the course of a year. This is very important if you want to keep your customers happy!
If you follow these five handy tips you’ll find a web hosting service provider who can keep your website up and running for very little cost.