Web Hosting is a place where your website files are stored on servers. You must have your blog hosted by the best hosting provider. In this post, you will learn How To Choose the Best Web Hosting Provider.
Before we move to the topic, let us see what is web hosting and why you need it.
What Is Web Hosting?
Choosing a perfect name for your blog is a big hassle. Once you choose your blog name and register it, you will need to choose a web hosting company where you will host your blog.
If you do not have a domain name yet, you can choose Namecheap and register a domain for under $1.
A Hosting Company provides you a space on their servers to store your website files. Like when you save any kind of files on your computer/laptop like Pictures, Videos, Text Files, etc., they are saved in your computer’s external memory called a Hard disk.
Likewise, your website files are going to be saved in the servers of the hosting company and visitors can access them all the time by just entering your domain name or searching your blog in search engines.
You can use free blogging services and live your blogging life under their restrictions, or you can launch your self-hosted blog and become a complete owner without any restrictions.
In the blogging world, 92% (Approx.) of bloggers use a self-hosted platform so they can do whatever they want. It is not a very expensive thing with some investment you can get branded web hosting company services with 24×7-365 support.
You can take a look at these top brands for web hosting companies and get a huge discount for you.
Now it’s time to switch to another important part of this article which is choosing the best web hosting provider. So let’s start.
How To Choose the Best Web Hosting Provider?
Remember one thing always, it is very important to choose the best web hosting provider. Sometimes newbies/beginners choose the wrong and cheap web hosting just to save money.
They will try to switch to another company when they face any problems with their hosting. Do not waste your time and money and make the right decision at the beginning of some research.
The wrong web hosting can cause your blogging career a lot. For starting a successful blog some first steps are always important. It is not an easy task to handle a blog; therefore you must go for a reliable provider.
Most newbies asked which web hosting is best and in their mind, they thought the company which provides 24/7 phone or chat support is best but it’s not a complete answer.
There are some additional and important features that good hosting providers offer, such as backup support, database support, unlimited emails, and so on.
I suggest you don’t go into deep technical details as a beginner just concentrate on the best support service. Now I will share with you some more tips for choosing a web hosting provider.
Top 10 Tips For Better Web Hosting Selection
Let us see the tips to select the best hosting provider.
Go With a Reputed Provider
This simple but basic rule is to check the service provider’s website for trustworthy signs such as a Physical Address, Contact Numbers, Company Information, and feedback from users (Testimonials).
Check that the company is listed in Better Business Bureau (BBB – For North America) Check here and check their ratings in India, you can check the company information and registration here Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA – For India) check here.
If your service provider doesn’t give you a good response or if you find any kind of problem or you want to share your views about the company then here at “BBB” you have two options (1- File a Complaint and 2- Submit a Customer Review). So, I thought these are good options for customers.
But trust me with the reputed companies you will never face any kind of problem or if you face any problem then they have great customer support for you.
Customer/Technical Support
If you are a beginner in the web hosting field, you might need help from others. How many experts do you have in your contact list and how many times do they help?
Make sure the company you choose offers 24/7 support.
If you are stuck with any problem at 3 a.m., do you want to wait? Your best step is to choose the hosting company that offers 24/7-365 phone support as well as chat and instant email support for customers.
Uptime
This is very important for your blog to live always. You need to remember always you are dealing with humans and technology which means things can still go wrong.
Reliable companies have the best technologies to make sure your site is up and running all the time which means their servers always work for you 24/7.
Top companies provide 99% network uptime for their customers.
You can search by yourself like this: go to Google and enter “[Company name] uptime” and check how many providers’ uptime is close to 99% and yes don’t forget to read customers’ reviews about uptime.
You can use these free Web Hosting Uptime and Website Performance Monitoring Services:
• MyHostingUptime
• Uptime robot
Money-Back Guarantee
Most of the trustable companies offer full money-back periods like 30, 45, and 90 days and in this period you will get the full refund back to your bank account.
Sometimes you might see that some companies have an “Anytime Money Back Guarantee”, which usually means that you will get back apportioned amount back. They cut some money and the rest money will be sent to you after the suggested period passes. So, make sure you read their “Terms of Services”.
Feature Full CMS
Some companies have the same CMS (Content Management System) and some have different CMS, most of the popular web hosting companies design their own user-friendly CMS for easy accessibility.
In the beginning, you don’t need to go deeper to check the features of CMS but once your blog grows there could be a need for additional and useful features.
Check out: 10 Best WordPress Hosting Providers
Email Accounts
When you enter the world of blogging for serious blogging then you have to use a professional email ID like [email protected] and maybe in the future, you need a team that also wants a professional email ID.
That’s why web hosting companies provide you an unlimited email option, but just in case they don’t then make sure they provide at least 5 domain emails so you can use these kinds of emails ([email protected]), ([email protected]) and ([email protected]) like these type of email id you need in future.
Price
When you first time choose any company whose hosting services are very reasonable and could be as low as a few dollars per month for the first year of services, you need to understand that next year’s renewal plan will be different for sure.
Make sure to check next year’s renewal plan information before registering for the web hosting service.
Check out: A2 Hosting Review
Backup Service
Web Hosting servers are not that safe some minor mistakes can become the reason for data loss and that’s the worst thing because you may lose all your website data in just a single click exactly as same as on your personal computer.
You should back up your site files and databases. If they don’t offer backup, then you have to back up it manually.
Some third-party companies provide you with cheap and reasonable plans for backing up your site automatically every day or every hour. I suggest you go with these companies.
Scalability to Grow
Let’s assume you buy a single domain hosting plan where your hosting space is around 100GB or less and what happens if your blog becomes bigger?
It’s good to know your hard work makes it bigger but when your blog starts to grow and get a huge number of visitors then you need more power and speed from your web hosting provider. So plan your blogging career and think ahead.
Security
You need to make sure that your website is secure from hackers.
Most of the time it’s a blogger’s responsibility to ensure that he/she has secure passwords for everything but malware and hackers can still strike which can be very harmful to your blog.
So, you can also take a look at the security monitoring services provided by some top web hosting service providers.
Check: How to secure your WordPress Blog Easily?
What else do you need to know about a Web hosting company?
To pick a good, professional, and reliable hosting company you will have to find some answers and decide whether this company is fulfilling these questions or not. Below I will provide some general and technical questions, check them out now.
1. The company you choose is it legit? And can you trust the company?
2. What kind of customer support do they offer?
3. Where is their customer support located?
4. Is their customer support handled by another company?
5. What is the average uptime? (check again what is uptime. above↑)
6. Where are the servers located?
7. Do they give you the option to choose the server location?
8. What are their security measures?
9. What are their backup measures?
10. Can you expand or reduce your hosting plan in the future?
Final Words
In this post, you saw “How To Choose the Best Web Hosting Provider“. I hope it was useful for you to select the web hosting provider. If you have any queries regarding web hosting then please post your question in the comment section below.
