7 Tips to Choose the Best Web Hosting Provider

Your web hosting plays a very important role on your ranking. For a website to be online it must be hosted on a web server. That is, a bad host which makes your site frequently inaccessible could be damaging to your ranking and your business in general, especially if it is an e-store or professional blog. Therefore, you must choose wisely your provider. This is even more important if you are choosing an international web hosting provider.

To help you find your way in the jungle of offers all over the internet, here are 6 criteria to check to smartly narrow your choices based on your needs and existing offers. These tips will help you create a professional website for your business and host it on a reliable server with peace of mind.

Chose Your Web Hosting

1. Determine what you need

In every aspect of your life, you cannot succeed if you don’t know what you want. First, decide what you want from the provider. For a blog, for instance, generally shared hosting will be good enough for you. Some providers also offer VPS and dedicated servers, but these options are adapted to sites much larger which use intensive resource. Shared hosting is the least expensive, and can support very large numbers of visitors, up to 100 000 visitors per month. In addition, it is easier to handle which makes ideal for a beginner. If you have a big enterprise which process huge data every single day Shared web hosting service is out of question.

Most hosts offer several shared hosting packages. To choose, you will especially look:

• The number of databases: a simple Wordpress blog may need only a single database to run, while a medium or big blog or forum may need multiple databases.
  • The number of sites you can host on one account: Some web hosts impose a limit you; others gives you the option to have unlimited websites.
• Amount of disk space: the least expensive accommodation packages offer typically 10 GB of storage. You can accept it and then upgrade as your visitors increase. After a year of blogging you may not even reach 350 MB of usage if you have modest traffic.

2. The Location of the Server

This is one of the most important criteria; yet most beginners never think to inquire about the location of their host. If you are looking to reach a local or a specific area, the idea is to ensure that your server is as close as possible to the location where most of your readers are.  You may ask why.  It’s very simple: when you visit a website, your browser “contact” the server where you stored the web pages … and the server “responds accordingly” by displaying the relevant page to the visitor. Obviously, the more the server is away, the more time it takes to receive inquiries and response.

If you are on the market for an international or global server, it is, therefore, important to choose a reliable provider which has many hosting locations. Although it can be a little bit more expensive, a global web hosting can be highly necessary if you are looking to reach different geographic market, having a website in multiple languages for instance. This will allow you to have your website hosted closer to your target visitors, and thus helping them to reach your website quicker.

3. Uptime and Reliability of the Server

Ask any experience webmaster out there, he will tell you the most annoying thing from a web server is to be constantly down.  Google does not like it either. That is, not only the incident will turn your visitors away it will also affect your ranking. Your website must be accessible 24h / 24, 7/7 without regular incident or slowdown. In reality, it may happen once or very rarely even among the best hosts: a server that fails, a temporary overload …, but it must not be a practice.

Most web hosts promise an uptime greater than 99.5%, but to get a better idea of the quality of their service, do not hesitate to check their uptime or consult real users using forums or other means. If you find that the incidents on the same type of accommodation are very common, it is not a good indicator of reliability. You can also take a ride on the provider’s technical support forum and see if customers complain a lot, if agents rarely answer them; this is a red flag.

4. Rates & Payment

The costs of shared hosting packages vary from one provider to another. What you need to be more cautious is the renewal conditions. Some offer a great discount in the first year and charge high costs after the promotion is over. Since it is not good to keep relocating your website from server to server, you can get stuck in an expensive host. The same, some hosts may offer subscriptions over several years. It may be bad or good idea.

Bad – First, you can decide to discontinue their service or take the site offline; second, you might want to change provider if you are dissatisfied with the service; there is no refund after 30 days.

Good – If you used to do business with the company and you know they are reliable you can accept a prolonged contract to pay a lower price. If you have a cooling-off period during which you can cancel the service for a full or partial (the remaining period) refund.

5. Support and Resources

Whether you are a beginner or experienced webmaster, it is sometimes necessary to contact the technical support for a clarification or some help. It can be a simple question (“how to do this/that”) or a more serious problem: hacking, accidental deletion of an important file… It is essential that technical support is not only responsive but also adaptive to your level and situation. A smart technique to evaluate their support is to, before you buy the service, ask a question via the website of the host and find out how long how long it takes them to respond.

In addition, you can also check to see if the host offers an FAQ section or online help. These FAQs answer many questions that may arise, with tutorials, explanations … It is often a way to get by without having to call technical support.

6. Automatic Backups

Many web hosts will take care of automatically back up your blog for you at no extra cost. This is very important If you do not want or know how to do it yourself or you tend to forget. This can also be extremely important in case of hacking; it helps you restore your file with just one click.

Today, you can find plenty of offers on the internet if you Google Webhosting. But some offers can turn to be trap or deception if you don’t know the right tips to use in order to choose a reliable company. Don’t search for the best price but for the best quality. Pay attention to technical aspects of your specific project; all hosting providers have deals that suit the majority, but only few offer features “to peculiarities” global/international accessibility, e-commerce, hosting multiple sites, etc.