If you’re thinking of starting a business of any kind, online or offline, one item on your to-do list will be to build a website. Your website could be a collection of web pages to share with the public, an application to help you to run your online operations, or a software solution to manage the documents for your business. It could also, of course, serve all three purposes.
If you’re a business owner familiar with the technology, it’s not a daunting task, but it can be if you’ve never had a website and don’t know much about different types of hosting. In that case, you could be setting yourself up for making an expensive mistake. You could lose business by buying too much or buying too little of the features you need. If you’re getting more features than you need, then you may be paying too much, and if you’re getting too few, your business could suffer from a lack of uptime and insufficient features to promote your business.
Here is a list of 4 questions to ask yourself when finding the best hosting solution for your website:
1.Should I get free or paid hosting?
Frankly, the only time you should get free hosting is if it’s a hobby website for your personal satisfaction. If it’s a business website, you should get paid hosting. Besides being free of irritating advertising, you’ll get all the features you need to build your online business presence.
- How much should I spend?
Prices for different hosting packages vary in price. It’s not always a good idea to decide on hosting based on price alone. The cheaper the price, the fewer features you will have available. Yes, you can always work your way up, starting with an inexpensive package and then either change web-hosting packages or hosts, but migrating all your stuff is both time consuming and expensive. Try to forecast your needs as best you can.
- What are the bare minimum features I could get?
Assuming you want to spend as little as possible for your website hosting because you can’t afford too much, you need to get clear on the minimum features and services that you will need.
You should have the following basic features:
- · Sufficient bandwidth to host the number of domains you plan to buy.
- · Website statistics support.
- · Email and webmail services.
- · Autoscript installations
- · PHP
- · MySQL
- · Technical support
- · 99.9% uptime.
If you can afford a little more, then add these features:
- · Server backup.
- · Malware scanning.
- · Dedicated IP.
- · Private SSL certifications.
- What type of hosting should I get?
There are 4 distinct types of hosting you should consider:
1.Shared hosting. This is the most affordable and easiest to start with, but you have no control over the server side or the performance. This is suitable for small to medium-sized businesses.
2.VPS hosting. This gives you root server access and a secured environment, but it is far more expensive than shared hosting. This is suitable if your business has more than 10,000 visitors a day. It is also a good choice if your website handles 10GB of files per day. Yours will be the only website on the server, which will give you more bandwidth and storage.
3.Dedicated hosting. This gives you maximum control and excellent server performance, but, it’s expensive and you will need skilled IT staff. This is suitable if your website uses a lot of audio and video files, as these are resource intensive and take up far more space than text and graphics.
4.Cloud hosting. This gives you server scalability and cost efficiency, but you need to have advanced computer knowledge to get the most out of its benefits. This is a good choice if you need to be exact about your resources for maximum performance. Cloud hosting is suitable if you have one or more websites. You will be able to be exact about features like RAM, processor, bandwidth, traffic, and space.
In closing, when deciding on hosting, there is a lot to think about so don’t use price alone as a criterion for selection. Read review websites, peruse testimonials, and comb through statistics to find the best, most reliable hosting solution for your website.
