Every business that operates in the digital world requires a reliable website. Without a website, your company might as well not exist at all. The main reason websites are so important is that modern consumers rely on the online world to conduct their research and compare prices, as well as offers, before they make a purchasing decision. In addition, they will look up businesses online to determine what the company is all about.
Therefore, if you don’t have a website, consumers simply won’t be able to find you. However, the foundation for every good website is its hosting provider. You can’t have one without the other. It’s safe to say that you rely on your hosting service as much as they rely on you. Still, you cannot settle for just any hosting service if you want to have a highly functional website, to begin with. You must choose the best. With that in mind, here are a few tips on how to choose the best hosting provider for your website.
Uptime
When it comes to choosing the best hosting provider, the very first thing you must focus on is uptime and your host’s server reliability. The main reason this is important is that it’s most likely that you’ll have visitors from all around the world. In other words, they’re most likely to be from different time zones. That’s why a host that’s available 24/7 is crucial. When it comes to uptime, it’s natural that your website will have to be offline during repairs, upgrades, backups and other activities. However, that downtime needs to be as minimal as possible. That’s why you need to choose a host that can provide you with 99% uptime. Anything below that is simply unacceptable and you should avoid it, to begin with. The standard uptime rate these days is 99.95% but premium offers include 99.99% uptime. If you have the budget to support this, then don’t hesitate to go for a premium.
Speed
Website speed is a vital factor for your website. Speed impacts both customer experience and your marketing strategies, such as SEO (Search Engine Optimization), for instance. Slow loading pages are something every modern consumer simply loathes. Although there’s a lot you can do to improve website speed on your own, this factor still relies heavily on your hosting provider and their efficiency. Therefore, choose only the hosting providers that can guarantee exceptional website speed. As an example, geographical location plays a vital role in website speed. For instance, if your business is located in Australia, it would be wise to opt for web hosting in Australia as well. That way, you won’t have to worry about the long distance between your business and your hosting service hindering your website speed.
Additional features
As you may already know, a good hosting provider will include additional features in their service offers. However, the best hosting provider will have a wide variety of features for you to choose from. You might start with a relatively basic website for your purposes but you might also consider upgrading it later on. Additional features should include upgrade options. For example, you can switch from shared hosting to cloud hosting eventually. What’s more, check out if a hosting provider offers eCommerce features should you choose to open up an online store at a certain point. In addition, check if they provide other features, such as 24/7 customer support, live chat and even cPanel features if you want more control over your website, for instance. It’s good to know that you have multiple options available to you, even though you might never use them.
Website backups
Website backup and restore features are among the most vital factors to look out for when choosing a hosting provider. Regular website backups are simply essential. The main reason is that you can restore your website to the state prior to the fatal crash or a data breach. If there’s no backup, your entire website is ruined. There are a lot of issues that can occur that will require you to restore your website to its previous version. For instance, cyber attacks are all too common and frequent in the online world. Also, critical failures due to server issues can also cause problems. Last but not least, installing the wrong updates or features may cause software conflict on your website, which will force you to restore it back. In any event, you can’t do any of that without a proper backup in place.
Having a functional website is essential these days. You cannot hope to succeed in the online world if you don’t have a reliable website, to begin with. However, in order to have such a website, in the first place, you must find the right hosting provider so make sure you choose the best.