Things to look for before choosing your web hosting plan

In the current scenario, each and every trade requires a website to promote its business. Conventional modes of advertisement are no longer the only adequate option to take your business to great heights. Ultimately, you need some source like social media platforms to keep your business rolling and reach out to people.

Are you looking for a web hosting service that is best for your business? Selecting a reputed web host for your personal website is a major decision as it will give a solid base in ensuring the triumph of your business. Appointing an appropriate web host will surely enhance and boost up the performance of your website.

If you do not make the right choice, you will land up with all kinds of annoyance and pointless expenses. It’s wonderful if you have an idea in mind about what kind of website is ideal for you. Have you given a thought as to which web hosting service you are going with?

The choice of web hosting service you make will determine the performance of your website and eventually be a sign of your brand and business. But, with several web hosting services to make a choice from, it is significant to make an apt choice.

A few factors that you should bear in mind when you choose the spot on web hosting service for your business are-

1. Comprehend the requirement of your site

A fast search on Google will unveil several web hosting services, and before choosing anyone, you should consider the requirements of your website. The initial or primary step towards opting for a suitable web host is to recognise as to what are your needs for the website. Ponder over the questions like, ” Should I use WordPress?”, ” The kind of website I require”, “Traffic expected on the website”.

These must be simple questions but are pretty significant. The more details you find out about the web provider, the easier will it be to come to a decision as to which provider is best for the job. If you go for WordPress, go for a controlled WordPress hosting provider. If you are keen to have online stores, then look for providers that focus on eCommerce. If you are a complete novice, it is suggested to go for a shared hosting plan with a company that has a reputation in the market.

Shared hosting is affordable and can be easily maintained, and is an idyllic option for novel and smaller sites. There are backend issues like security and maintenance, and it allows you to focus on structuring your website.

2. 100%Uptime

Another significant factor to glance out for is the average uptime that indicates the normal sum of time for which your website stays upbeat for a certain period of time. The average uptime of your website is vital as it can influence how much traffic the personal website gets. The website will not get sufficient traffic if the people visiting cannot have access to it when visited.

Just half an hour of downtime will mean that your business is losing quite a lot of possible clients. This is one of the major reasons why you expect to have 100% average uptime. An average uptime anywhere below 99% would be an indication that the customer would look for a diverse web hosting provider.

3. Investigate the signup and renewal rates

When you are looking for a good web hosting plan the two different prices that you are required to look for are the signup rate and the renewal rate.

In the majority of the cases, the payment done while buying a plan would be low, and on renewal, it is pretty high. Though there are a lot of offers and discounts at the renewal time but then also the renewal rate is considerably higher.

Regrettably, it is a normal practice with the web hosting services to increase their renewal rates, and till the time you decide to change your hosting services after 1 to 3 years, you cannot get away from that price hike.

It is thus suggested to go with those web hosting services that are level-headed with their price hikes. For instance, if the rate at the signup is 50%, the renewal rate should not be more than 100%.

4. Check if the company offers a free trial or refund policy

Using web hosting to promote your business can be an expensive undertaking. When it is a small start-up, and your budget is small, you should go with those services that offer a free trial period or have a refund policy.

When you are offered free trials, you can carefully evaluate the hosting plan that is affordable and can opt for it according to the need of your website. If things do not go according to your website, you can always change your hosting provider that offers great refund policies, which will ensure that you do not lose a great amount of cash. It is advisable to go for the companies that provide money-back guarantees after the trial period has ended.

5. Customer Support

Another chief factor that should be considered is the customer support offered by the web hosting services. If the customer support is good, the website issues can be dealt with quickly and more efficiently. Web hosting services normally offer chat, phone or mail services.

The thing that will make a difference will be how quickly they respond to the problems and how devoted and professional the staff is. Some of the server problems cannot be handled on your own, and that is the time when dependable customer service is required.

Ultimately you must be keen to appoint a hosting provider that offers immediate support through telephone or live chat and resolve your issues in a flick of a second. So, when you are hunting for an ideal hosting service, ensure that you read the reviews of the company online on social media and read the testimonials of the customers. This will help you to get a fair idea of the quality of services offered by the web company.

6. Loading time

Another factor that you should bear in mind while opting for an ideal web plan is to verify the loading time of the page, which indicates the amount of time taken to upload the page. Just as the uptime affects the traffic on your website, the loading time also affects how much traffic will visit your website.

Just in case the web page loading takes time, the visitor gets irritated and switches over to the other website. In this way, you can lose your potential customer. Google research has revealed that more than 50% of the visitors using mobile leave the site if it takes 5 seconds for the page to load. For this reason, if a web hosting plan offers a page load time of fewer than 5 seconds, it is preferred by the customers.

7. Choose the company that provides backups for your website

For any website, backups are mandatory. Even if your system is equipped with the best safety measures in the entire world, your website is sure to be hit by some type of virus, crash or failure.

It can also be hacked, which will degrade your website and take your business down and spoil it completely. It is here when an excellent backup policy comes in handy as you can approach your web hosting provider in case an accident occurs. A reliable host provider is able to reinstate your complete site and, in worst cases, a chunk of it. They do this in the minimum possible time and try to avoid major losses.

A few of the chief queries that you should ask your web host services related to backups are-

• Is your site manually backed up through the control panel?
• Are regular back-ups carried out
• Are there any programs to have back-ups of your website?
• Can you reinstate the files backed up yourself, or do you require the staff to do that?

Final word

When you are deciding upon a web hosting company, it is important that you take ample time to weigh and choose the befitting option. You can put away a lot of hassles and dilemmas if you are a little more watchful and vigilant on the way you finally decide upon your web hosting provider. For this, all you need to be sure of are the needs of your website, reliability of the server, the flexibility of the plans, affordability, features the company is offering, adequate backups, superior customer support and speed of the server.

Though there are quite a few other factors when you opt for a web host plan. The ones that have been listed above are, however, the most important ones and are mandatory and should be considered when deciding on your hosting service provider.

Doing this can take up your business and website to the zenith. In order to grow your website into the foreseeable prospect, consider adopting an all-inclusive approach to recognising an apposite web hosting service.

Get in touch with us at EMB to learn more.

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Team EMB

Our team of expert writers is committed to bringing insights on topics ranging in the fields of technology, marketing, and business. With a wide-reaching range of services on our platform, we help businesses achieve digital transformation end-to-end.