7 Best Practices while Choosing a Web Hosting Service Provider

Web hosting has become one of the fastest growing services across the globe. According to latest reports, it is said that internet web hosting services industry has grown substantially in the last five years due to great demand from companies to expand their web presence around the world. Industry experts believe, this trend is about to continue in the coming five years to 2020. With increasing complexity due to technological advancement in the form of new hand-held devices, the level of expertise needed from web hosting companies is critical for businesses to meet new demands. Well, choosing a web hosting service provider can be tricky as there are various things to consider before considering the right fit. Get to know 7 such best practices while choosing a web hosting service provider.

1. Check what type of Individual Plans they Offer

   First, understand what kind of bandwidth you are looking at and then decide on a plan that suits you the best. For instance, CopaHost’s economy plan starts at just € 1.99 a month which is incredible. Usually, there will be three different plans across major web hosting service providers in the form of Economy (cheap web hosting), Value, and Professional hosting and differs in bandwidth, space, and monthly traffic. So, an economy plan is best suited for beginners who do not expect too much of traffic in the beginning. If you are an established online entity who is looking to significantly improve the performance of your website/s, then a professional hosting plan is what you require with unlimited bandwidth and storage space.

2. Research on their Reliability and Uptime Aspect

   It is always good to do a thorough research on their reliability and uptime aspect of a web hosting service provider. In fact, this has to be foremost criteria while selecting your web host. Your complete business depends on how they perform on a monthly basis. It is quite difficult to provide 100% uptime 24/7 and 365 days long – but look for web hosts who have 99-99% uptime. Make sure you check their redundancy plans in case of any utility failure. For instance, check on their backup generator and UPS options before finalizing on your web host.

3. Make Sure to Follow up on Testimonials

   Many web hosting companies do showcase their impressive testimonials from customers and list websites that they are hosting. Just reading the review of their service on their website is not enough, you can try contacting these listed clients and check with their experiences with the host. This will be an eye opener for you, as many of those testimonials will be outdated for obvious reasons. Moreover, feel free to do your own testing for performance on those websites and see how they measure up.

4. Check for Dedicated Servers

   There is a catch in many web hosting plans where individual plans are referred as “Shared Hosting Plans” where they share the space of servers with others around the world. Problems arise when your website outgrows the plan that you chose in the earlier instance with limited traffic and performance in mind. Your web host should be able to provide seamless account transitions as and when the demand arises with regards to dedicated servers.

5. Check the Location Where Your Server will be Based From

   It is very important to know the physical location of your web host’s servers. Many web hosting providers have their servers offshore, especially in huge data centres in the US. For instance, if you target audience is from Australia, then choosing a local web hosting service provider within the country makes sense. Moreover, it will be very easy to deal with if both the support team and the data centre are in the same time zone. All this will help in minimizing issues and downtime of your website and provide uninterrupted service for your customers.

6. Check Whether They Provide Round the Clock Customer Support

   Your web host should be able to guarantee 24/7 technical assistance / customer support across all platforms in the form of phone calls, live chats, and email assistance. If there are any issues with email, storage space, payment gateways, and certain website errors, all of them need technical assistance which has to be provided round the clock and not just at the time that is favorable to your web hosting company. It is  imperative that your website needs to be free of issues to perform at an optimum level and provide higher degree of customer satisfaction; your website cannot slowdown and face major issues, it would be detrimental where it will have both immediate and long-term effects.

7. Check for User-Friendly Panel and Script Supports

   Typically your web host should provide you a user-friendly control panel that lets you to create and manage your web content without any assistance. Moreover, your web host should also offer in-built support for popular web scripts like WordPress, Joomla, and others. Everything should be seamless – starting from managing content to creating databases, FTP accounts, and email accounts. They should also provide you the option of creating multiple domains, and delete them as per your will.

Choosing the right web hosting service provider with cheap web hosting plans can be tricky and it needs some careful considerations before finalizing the right one. The above mentioned best practices are the ones that are followed by industry big wigs and need to be considered while making partnering with the right web host. Do share your views on how you go about choosing the right web hosting service.

Author Bio:

Copahost is one of the leading web hosting service provider in the world and based out of Lisbon, Portugal. They have a robust 8+ years of experience in hosting websites, and currently have their own datacenter in Lisbon with a capacity of more than 500 servers that are powered by renewable energy with zero carbon emission. They are also a certified Microsoft SPLA Partner.