Many small online businesses tend to choose cheaper hosting providers in order to keep costs lower. However, this can be a terrible decision for budding businesses, and leads to a loss in profits. Read if you are a small business owner who needs web hosting advice.
Compare the features which are available on each host when choosing between them. When viewing various hosts, compare their level of service to the particular feature you need. The price advantage of one host may not be worth the savings if they lack certain features that you require.
Shared Hosting
Should you consider dedicated hosting? What about shared hosting? If your site is very complicated, with a high volume of traffic, shared hosting may not be a good option. It is a great idea to find a web host that is dedicated.
Think about paying extra to get secure server certificates for site safety purposes. A secure server is a sign of trust to a potential customer. You will want to use this option if you are asking your site visitors to provide you any sensitive information, like their address or financial details.
Your web host should provide you with live statistics on your visitors. When you first start with your host, you can install a free counter on your website to ensure your host’s numbers are accurate. As an online business owner, you will benefit from using this information to tailor your approach to your audience.
Does the company offer a portion of your money back if you want to end your contract early? If you become dissatisfied with the service within 30 days of signing up, you should have the right to cancel your service and have your money returned to you. Some hosting providers make promises they cannot keep.
Don’t choose a web page hosting service just because the company doesn’t charge you for hosting. Most free hosting services post banner ads on all the websites they host. Your control over these ads will be limited, at best. Having ads appear randomly on your site also makes it seem less professional.
Customer Service
If you do not have much experience in web design, pick one of the web hosts that has excellent customer service instead of a lot of other extras. When you first start out there are a lot of questions that pop up in your head about hosting, so you’re going to want a host that has great customer service available and ready to answer all of your questions. The technical support offered is what is really important, and not the fancier applications.
Ensure that the web host you choose supports any and all programming languages that your development team uses now, or might use down the road. If you don’t have the correct language support, your website will not succeed. If you choose to add additional features in the future using a new programming language that your host doesn’t support, you’ll probably have to choose between nixing your upgrade or leaving the hosting service. It can be a big hassle to have to change website hosting companies.
By now, you should know that web hosting is not an area where you should try to cut costs. Anyone needing to maintain an online presence must be able to depend on their web hosting service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Take the advice you have learned here and apply it to your search for a web host. Knowing what to look for and what to avoid is half of the battle.