The abundance of offers from providers makes the choice of hosting a long and painstaking process. What to choose and why? Therefore, for those who are not used to long hesitation and analysis, we suggest simplifying the process of evaluating hosting for websites with the help of this guide. Reliable companies exist, and today we will help you figure out what factors you should consider to find a good and reliable website hosting.
Obviously hosting has an impact on the back end of a site’s performance. For example, you can take a website speed test. Real data on the reliability of this or that hosting can be obtained only from the experience of use. But we will help to appreciate any hosting already before using it here.
Top 3 Factors for Hosting Evaluation
To determine how high-quality website hosting is, you must initially pay attention to several factors for evaluating hosting:
Factor #1. Price
This is perhaps one of the determining factors in assessing the quality and reliability of hosting. First, it must be declared initially, preferably without hidden fees on the site itself. For each tariff plan, there is a list of services provided, based on which you can choose hosting. The average price can’t be too low or too high. It testifies to the provider’s competitiveness in providing services at the proper level.
Today, tempting offers of low prices or even free of charge are increasingly common. Perhaps free web hosting for students will help save money to launch the first small projects. However, if it is planned that the web project will have a lot of traffic, then in this case the risks are extremely undesirable. One should be guided primarily by the supplier’s reliability, the quality of services, and not the price. More on that below.
Factor #2. Technical Support
What you definitely cannot do without is 24/7 professional support. Any site owner will need technical support sooner or later. Therefore, one should not neglect to contact the support service already at the initial stages of potential cooperation. Start contacting with any incomprehensible questions related to the operation of the site and you will notice how quickly and expertly the support team can help you. Evaluate the promptness of their answers (especially at night or on weekends), friendliness, the usefulness of answers, etc. Ideally, technical support should work around the clock, seven days a week, because a problem or question can arise at any minute.
Factor #3. Functionality & Specifications
The broader your project requirements, the more carefully you need to choose hosting based on its technical characteristics and features. Ideally, the amount of disk space, traffic, bandwidth, and other key parameters should be unlimited. In the case of expanding your project, you will not need to worry every time but whether your hosting will cope with new technical challenges. For example, the average percentage of equipment operability for a month is not less than 99% (while site downtime will not be more than 1%).
How to Understand the Hosting Is Chosen Correctly: 3 Crucial Criteria
For a more accurate assessment of hosting services, it is recommended to use the test period, thanks to which you can get to know more about the tariff plans. But now you will be able to go through all the key aspects of reliable hosting, namely:
- The period of operation of the provider. The longer a company has been in operation, the more credibility it has. Pay attention to the start date of the server-provider, the age of the domain. Read reviews about it and estimate market share using dedicated statistical resources.
- Complete and detailed information on tariffs. It is very good that the provider’s website itself has other topical issues that are relevant when choosing a provider and its services. For example, a large selection of offered options and a user-friendly interface will allow you to implement project tasks in a short time.
- The location of data centers. Yes, they can be geographically located in different countries. But it’s better to choose a server that is as close as possible to your target audience. The further the server is, the longer the signal travels, which can introduce some delays in the operation of sites.