How to choose your hosting provider?

When you want to launch your website or cloud application, your hosting provider can affect the experience that customers will have on your site. Having spent a lot of time on research and development of your service, the last thing you need is an inefficient hosting service. What should you consider before buying web hosting services?

When you want to purchase web hosting services, consider the provider as your partner. Many things can go wrong during launch or as users grow. For example, mentions in influential blogs can send an upsurge of traffic to your site making your servers to crash. If you are anticipating a lot of users, you should know what kind of hosting you will need. Here are some factors you should consider when choosing a hosting provider:

Disk Space & Bandwidth

How much disk space will your website require?  Most companies offer packages with different disk space sizes and at different prices.  While it is important to consider the price when choosing a hosting provider, remember you get what you pay for. Check the disk space and bandwidth limitations for the packages that you are considering.

You can start with a modest package and later upgrade to a robust one as your needs change. HostMonk and WHReviews are two great places you can review the packages offered by different companies.

Hardware

Find out what type of hardware the hosting company is using. This may be more technical in nature but a little research on your part can save you valuable time and money hosting with a company that uses hardware that is not compatible with your application or that does not match your needs.

Find out whether the company is operating Windows or Linux servers. You also want to know other hardware the servers use since they can affect the performance of your site. This TechRepublic article offers more insight on the hardware considerations to make.

Features/Add ons

Hosting providers offer fairly the same basic services. However, you will be getting a better deal hosting with some providers. Find out what makes a hosting company special. For example, a company may offer free domain privacy, regular backups, improved site speed, green technology, multiple data centers and so on.

If you find a hosting company that offers some of the things you need or find important, you should look into using them.

Control Panel/User Interface

There are some basic things that any online business owner should be able to do on their own even if they are not tech savvy. For example, setting up email addresses, uploading files via FTP, installing WordPress and so on are things you can do by yourself. Does your host provide Plesk or cPanel to easily make modifications or updates.

Having access to the Plesk or cPanel will save you crucial time in doing simple tasks like uploading files.

Customer Support

Downtimes can affect your website and leave your customers with a bad experience. You want a hosting provider that you can easily reach via phone or email to get your problems sorted out.

For example, when there is a conflict between your application and the server, the hosting provider’s technical team should be able to point out the cause of the conflict and advise you on the way forward.  Read reviews of different providers at web hosting forums likeWeb Hosting Talk and Web Hosting Jury.

Before you purchasing hosting from any hosting company, check the features offered and compare them with packages offered by other providers. You should also compare the prices of different companies and the support you should expect.