After you set the domain name for your site, choosing a web hosting service is generally the second decision you need to make, but of course, we consider it the most important. Why? Because once you’ve started the website and everything works, you can’t allow having failures, interruptions, DNS changes, alterations of content, connectivity loss or email malfunction. Why? Because you lose visitors, customers, opportunities, time, and ultimately money. A bad choice regarding your web hosting can cause a multitude of other and other problems.
If you’re ready to choose a provider and a web hosting plan, you should take into consideration the following:
Is the Bandwidth sufficient for web hosting?
Every time someone or something visits your website (need to be considered as robots are also visiting your site, not just people) happen an exchange of information between the web server hosting to your browser program which knows how to display everything so friendly. Total file size downloaded from the server to your computer is called bandwidth. When hosting should take into account bandwidth limitations and make sure that it is enough for the website to be displayed correctly every month. Otherwise you can be surprised that you have reached the limit of the band prior to month end and the site is no longer displayed. If you have an online store, you must ensure that you have a hosting plan with unlimited bandwidth.
Web Hosting Disk Space
It is the same thing as hard disk space on your computer. But, web hosting companies do not allow you to have larger storage capacities (if you pay more, this option is given). This will dictate how much information you have on your website, before making the upgrade to the next hosting plan. In general, the price usually increases with increasing hard disk space and limits the range from 50 MB to unlimited packages. Just be aware that 50 MB is often insufficient for a site in development (50MB enough for a small site or a page). On the other hand, at the opposite end there are unlimited packages but often unnecessary and expensive.
Web Hosting Types
In general, most web hosting companies offer three options. Ideal option for you will depend largely on what you want to do with the website, what level of security and stability you want, and of course the budget.
Is Digital Art Really Art?Shared Web Hosting Server
- On a server there are many hosted websites;
- At this time they have the lowest prices for web hosting services;
- Easy to setup;
- If you have a “bad neighbor”, it can affect things such as rankings on Search engines, the flow of e-mail, etc;
- Service may be unstable. Often depends on traffic and uneven safety on other websites on the same server.
Virtual Private Server Hosting
- Server is shared between multiple sites, but rather speak of sharing all available resources, sites are allocated on their own resources (each “segment” works independently);
- You have more freedom and greater access to the server;
- Guaranteed bandwidth and also guaranteed disk space;
- Good price for the performance of this web hosting plan;
- High security level with enhanced features such as SSL (secure connection);
- Is the ideal web hosting plan for online stores or ecommerce sites.
Dedicated Web Hosting Server
- Each website is client on one server;
- Thoroughly customization server to fit the exact needs of the client;
- Some sites may use multiple servers to have faster connections;
- Higher levels of security are possible;
- Expensive;
- In general is a good web hosting plan for websites who needs to work very quickly.
Managed or unmanaged server?
Well you have two options:
- Generally you need a minimum set of skills to run and maintain the web hosting. If you are the website administrator and your lack of experience is certain, the best choice is to call the pros. In this case choose the managed server web hosting.
- If you can handle yourself in all the above options and to make the starting configuration of the website then to deal with current problems, be sure to choose an unmanaged server. Saving money may be important.
Basic features for a quality web hosting provider.
Once you know about everything above and you decide what you need and what you are looking for, you can begin comparing web hosting offers. Compared to the budget and the needs of your website there are several other things that will need to take into account:
- FTP access – FTP is the main way to load files on the website. Be careful what you choose because some web hosting providers enables you to use any uploading way, while others have their dedicated software to this.
- Email accounts – Some hosting packages only allow some e-mails, while others will allow one or two of them and with others the possibility are endless. Make sure you have enough addresses for what you need, as well as an additional possibility in order to move forward.
- Guarantee up-time – Best webhosting companies will guarantee at least 99% up-time. This means a lot of downtime hours per month but offers some protection if something happens to go wrong.
- Reliability, security and maintenance – The main purpose of web hosting company is to maintain functional servers. So make sure that equipment maintenance, software, and other important components that are necessary for hosting are ok. The best way to do this is through recommendations from customers already using the company’s web hosting service.
- Customer service – Something will go wrong eventually. It is inevitable. The most important thing is to have at your disposal a support team available 24/7, which is useful and easy to work with. In this way, when something happens, the problem can be treated very quickly and as easily as possible.