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How good is your web hosting package?

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How good is your web hosting package?

Your website demands web hosting to be accessible to users online. The web hosting provider you choose is imperative to the success of your site. But how to make that choice? The variety of companies and plans can be confusing, so you can perform a little market research to narrow down the options. This tip is also valid for your current plan. In case you are hesitant about the ratio of value and quality of your plan, research and compare until you find the best provider for your needs.

Web hosting comparison can be quite helpful, as it correlates the providers’ various features, making the choice easier for you. Fortunately, specific platforms such as Howtohosting Guide are specialized in creating comparative content regarding web hosting plans. 

Which features determine the quality of your web hosting package?

Web hosting companies present a range of plans with pre-configured web servers to host your site. You can rely on plans that handle everything, including technical maintenance and support.

In general, an excellent web hosting plan has to offer quality in the following segments. Each of them is equally important: price, bandwidth, storage, scalability, security, support, and backup.

If you are on a tight budget, you may want to start looking for a good shared hosting plan. This is an affordable way to initiate your project, perfect for the early stages of grooming your site. However, once your project starts accelerating its pace and attracts more traffic, your provider should be able to upgrade your plan. Ensure that upgrading your plan will be smooth, and don’t hesitate to ask as many questions as you can think of. 

The bandwidth and the speed of your plan are connected. In short, the bandwidth is the amount of data you can transfer to and from your server every month. This factor depends on the web page size, the number of visitors, and the number of visited pages. Note that each provider offers different levels of bandwidth. If your website is small, bandwidth won’t be of much concern. Most companies offer a sufficient amount even with their cheapest plans. However, the less bandwidth available, the slower the website is to load regardless of your visitors’ internet speed. 

You should know that some providers offer unlimited bandwidth options, which in most cases, is unnecessary. If you are unsure about the amount of bandwidth you need, contact the chosen firms and ask them to perform a calculation in your favour. 

Storage is another feature, often advertised as unlimited. If you are running a small project, a cheap shared plan will satisfy your storage needs, unless you upload lots of videos to your site. Scalability is another crucial element of an excellent plan. If your provider is not scalable, your website can’t handle sudden spikes in visitors. Such increases can be seasonal, and you should be prepared for them. In other words, if you want your site to grow, you need scalable service, allowing you to upgrade whenever the time comes.

As for security, as a minimum requirement, you need a spam prevention tool and an SSL certificate. Having an SSL certificate, in particular, will also increase the trustworthiness of your site. Another layer of security to consider at some point is a solution against DDoS (distributed denial-of-service attacks), such as Cloudflare.

Running a website also means experiencing technical issues, so you should check the level of professionalism of the provided technical support experts. Needless to say, support should be available at all times, or 24/7, via live chat, email, and (or) telephone. 

Backup may be at the end of this list of crucial features, but it as critical as the rest. You need daily, automatic backups of your site, so you can restore it if something goes wrong. Make sure to ask if a backup is available with your chosen plan.

More tips to find the best offers in the niche market

Another excellent advice we can give you when hunting for offers is choosing your hosting locally. This is especially valid when you are planning to target a specific country. If this is your case, you can read the reviews of local clients. Also, take note of the local currency and the regulations. 

Lastly, require information about the service level agreement (SLA), and get to know the clauses that specify service details in terms of cost, availability, etc. Some companies also mention the uptime in the SLA, which is usually around 99%. This number means that your site is expected to be down for approximately three days a year. That being said, uptime is another critical factor when making the web hosting choice, so don’t forget to consider it.