6 Important Factors to Consider before Choosing your Web Host

October 1, 2020

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Factors to Consider before Choosing Web Host

Businesses need to have a website that will help them to reach out to their audience more effectively. You can set up workflows that will help you to embark the visitor on a buyer’s journey before you may sign them up for your product or service. You must ensure the best services to make sure that the site is in the best hands together with policies and procedures in place before hosting your website.

While designing an enthralling website is a challenging task, it is equally tough to select a web host. According to wphost.nz study – 40% of visitors will abandon your site if the web page takes more than three seconds to load. Therefore website loading speed is a key factor in your website visitor experience. Your web host can therefore be one of the criteria that can remove visitors from your website. It is also essential that your web host has proper processes in place to ensure the security of your site. In this article, we will discuss some of the factors you must consider before selecting a web host.

Table of Contents

Reliability of the Host Servers

The performance of your site depends a lot on the hosting servers. Your website must be up for most of the day and allow visitors to find answers to their queries on your website. It influences your search rankings that are critical to enabling your website to be visible to the audience. Before signing up with the web host, you must always sign up a Service Level Agreement finalizing the average uptime of the host servers.

You must ensure that the website is up at least 99% of the day. You must go through the Terms of Service before signing up with the web host. It is essential to have the terms included in the agreement, along with the associated penalties for any breach.

Web security

It is crucial to do a cross-check on the security levels of the web host and ensure they provide an SSL certificate as part of the deal to host your website. It will use the HTTPS platform to encrypt the communication between the web server and the web browser of the visitor. If it is not a part of the deal, you may have to buy an SSL certificate. There are several cheap options available at SSL providers like SSL2BUY, GlobalSign, RapidSSL, etc. You may need the help of the hosting services provider to install the SSL certificate on the servers hosting your website.

Support services and resources allocated

Before signing up with the web host, always ask questions about the resources that will be allocated to your project. You should take an interview with the personnel who will be assigned to handle your website. The mode of support is also critical, and you must check whether it will be an email, phone, ticket-based or chat-based support. The initial response time and the final response time must be decided on the SLAs agreed with the web host.

Also, check the level of support offered by your website. You must note that the cost of the hosting package could vary based on the support package you choose. For example, the price for 24X7 package will be higher than the package for an 8X5 option. It will help if you check all the technical support packages on offer along with the differences among the packages.

Type of web hosting

It is essential first to understand the pros and cons of each hosting service package and then choose one that will be suitable for you. You must ideally opt for a dedicated server for your website. It will help you in implementing an SSL certificate dedicated to your website. The security features for this option would be the best as you will have the server dedicated only for your website.

dedicated vs vps vs shared compared to choose web host — (Source: https://www.liquidweb.com/blog/shared-hosting-vs-vps-vs-dedicated/)

This option will be expensive, and you may choose the virtual private server where the dedicated server is partitioned into several independent virtual servers. The option leads to a better security apparatus than a shared server option. It also provides better opportunities to undertake future customizations ion the website.

Datacenter security and backup

The web host must have proper security policies in place to prevent any data breach. There must be access control mechanisms at the data centers. It is crucial to have antivirus, firewalls, intrusion prevention systems, network monitoring systems, etc. in place to ensure proper controls to thwart cyberattacks.

It is also essential for the hosting services provider to take periodic backups to stay prepared for the worst. When choosing the hosting package, you must ensure that your package allows a disaster recovery site. It will enable the web host to keep a replica of the website at a disaster recovery location. It will enable you to prevent downtime due to any unavoidable scenario, like any server malfunction.

The add-ons

When finalizing the web hosting partner, you must check out whether these add-ons are including in the package. The control panel must be user-friendly as you would need to handle it when managing emails, making customizations, and setting up the security apparatus. If you have a new site, it would be ideal if the web host has an option to register your domain too. Having an email account or multiple accounts for your employees with the organization name will be another ideal add-on for the package.

The hosting service must allow to scale up and add more web pages as your business grows. Over a period, your blog site will also grow. Also, FTP is a vital tool for the website maintenance team. The host must provide the credentials to allow your website support team to access at any time in the day.

Conclusion

It is crucial for your business to partner with a reliable web host. It is vital to ensure proper security policies and procedures to be in place. Always check if the web host will provide the SSL certificate. Else you must buy an SSL certificate to ensure foolproof web security. Ideally, you must audit the networks of the web host periodically or request them to provide adequate certification confirming adequate security measures having been put in place. We have discussed some of the factors that can help you finalize the web host. Hopefully, you will find them useful.