One of the biggest dilemmas that online businesses will face first is choosing the right hosting provider. Whether it is for blogs, an online store, or a company website, you need to have a reliable and high-performing host who you can rely on for your site.
At HostUpon, we have plenty of guides to help you with web hosting issues, but if you’re a first-timer and need a little help with choosing your first web host, then we’ve got 7 important things that you need to consider before signing up with a hosting company.
- Determine what your hosting needs are first
Before you start researching on a hosting company, we recommend that you first identify what it is you’re looking for in a hosting company. Here are some sample questions that you should ask yourself first:
- What type of website are you building? (Online store, blog, etc.)
- Do you have a platform in mind? (WordPress, etc.)
- Do you need specialized software (php, java, etc.) to code your website?
- What amount of traffic are you targeting?
- Do you intend to create more than one website?
Use these questions as a guideline for an idea of what you want to achieve with your website. The more detailed you can be, the better it is for you to determine whether a hosting company is a perfect fit for you.
- Do they have in-house technical support?
A really important factor that you need to consider for a hosting company is whether they provide technical support for their customers.
For a well-established company, they should have an in-house technical team with 24-hour support, 7 days a week and is reachable via live chat, phone, and email.
But how do you determine if their support team is good? Check out their comments section or read up on reviews from third-party sites such as WHSR or Trustpilot.
HostUpon prides itself on offering an awesome in-house customer support that’s focused on providing solutions and fixing issues that our customer faces. So don’t be afraid to drop us a line if you need help at all!
- Do they have their own Datacenter?
A Datacenter (or Datacentre) is a basically a facility that’s built for the purpose of housing all of your site’s data in a safe, secure, and reliable location.
The main purpose of a Datacenter is to ensure:
- Data connectivity
- Electrical connectivity
- Data security
- Environmental stability
If the hosting company has its own Datacenter, then odds are they much more capable of providing a smoother hosting experience for your site. Typically, a Datacenter is ranked from Tier 1 to 4, with 4 being the highest tier.
HostUpon has expended the data center location to United State and Canada. You can choose to host your site nearest to the targeted audience for better user experience.
- Is it a globally trusted brand?
If you’re looking to hire a hosting company for your first website, would you go with a no-name brand or a brand that has established themselves?
It’s a no-brainer that you always go with an established and globally trusted brand.
Why? For starters, a brand with a global presence means that their services are being used and trusted by customers all over the world.
HostUpon is a proudly Canadian company with a great focus on the Canadian market but we’ve also established a global presence and our large international customer base is proof of that.
- The ability to upgrade when necessary
When you first start a website or a blog, we recommend that you start with a shared web hosting plan. During the early stages of your website/blog, it’s best to choose a cheap web host and keep the cost at a minimum level so you can focus on growth.
Once you’ve reached a point where your website/blog is pulling in massive traffic, then you need to consider upgrading from a shared hosting server to a dedicated hosting server. This is where the option to upgrade your hosting plan will come in handy.
Take some time to research on a company upgrade service before committing yourself to a plan. You never know how big your site may grow in a few years so it helps to have the ability to upgrade when you need it.
- Server uptime and performance
Every business owner knows that time is money. You can lose out on hundreds of sales opportunities, experience drops in productivity, and even damage your brand reputation if your site becomes inaccessible for periods of time.
When you talk about uptime, it’s better to have a hosting company that can keep your site up-and-running at all times.
The standard for most web hosting company is to provide a 99.9% uptime and reliability, however, it also helps if they have dedicated staff available at data centers to keep watch on your website.
- Backups for your site
Let’s face it, at some point, you will face a website crash for your business which will ultimately cause heavy disruption for your users. The reasons for your website crash can vary from hackers to a damaged index.php file or even just random malfunctions.
When you’re in this predicament, it helps to have a backup ready so that you can restore your site again. A good hosting company should conduct regular backups for your site in case you might ever need it.
We recommend you ask the following question before committing to a hosting company:
- Do they conduct automatic backup regularly?
- Do they have a backup option in the admin control panel?
- Are there any manual back options for your site?
- Do they provide any plugins for site backup?
- Do they provide assistance for restoring the site’s backup?
Conclusion
Web hosting company is the foundation in which your website will live upon so it important that you choose the right one for your business. If you want to make sure that you have the best experience with a hosting company, make sure you consider the 7 things we’ve outlined before signing up.
If you need more help with web hosting and all other things related to web hosting, check out our blog for guides and useful articles.
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