Do you want to move your site to another hosting or do you want to create a new site? Choosing a web host is not an easy task, made more difficult by the availability of many cheap or free hosting providers. Don't hesitate to register for free hosting. Remember that there are a number of factors to consider when choosing a hosting, and that in the long term, paid hosting may be more beneficial than free hosting.
Steps
Part 1 of 4: Determining Your Needs
Step 1. Think about your existing site
Did you create it for friends and family or to practice building websites? Is this a blog or a personal site? Is the site a corporate website or a store? By answering these questions, you will be able to choose the right web host.
If you've created a website for friends and family or to practice building websites, opt for free hosting. It will be slow and full of ads, but you should be able to learn how to work with web servers
Step 2. Be aware of potential growth
Is your business growing? Do you find new clients every day? Do you think that the number of visitors to your site will increase? Perhaps the hosting you are currently happy with will not be the same in the future. Therefore, consider possible future changes when choosing a web host.
Remember that it is difficult to transfer a site to another hosting from most free hosting services
Step 3. There are three main types of hosting
shared server, virtual server and dedicated server.
- If a site is located on a shared server, then it shares the server's resources with other sites (which are also located on this server). This is the most affordable type of hosting, but the speed of your site will be slow. It is not recommended to choose this type of hosting if you are going to open an online store.
- Virtual servers are virtual dedicated servers that are more stable and performant than shared servers. This type of hosting is recommended for small online stores or sites with a large number of visitors.
- A dedicated server is a real server that only hosts your website. This type of hosting is used by corporate sites, large online stores and sites with a huge audience. A dedicated server is an expensive but most efficient type of web hosting.
Part 2 of 4: Checking the quality of customer service
Step 1. The quality of customer service is one of the most important factors to consider when choosing a web host, as technical problems can affect the performance of your site
On the website of each hosting, go to the section "Working with clients" to find out about the services provided.
- The best option is to be able to speak with a live person or write an email and get a response within 24 hours.
- If forum is the only customer support option offered, look for another hosting. On the forum, you can wait for a response for several days.
Step 2. Check the speed of response
If the hosting works with clients via email or forum, write a couple of emails or leave a few messages (on the forum) to check the speed of response. For example, you may be interested in the process of transferring your site to this hosting. The attitude towards a potential client will give you an idea of how the hosting administration will treat you when you become a regular customer.
Step 3. Read reviews about the web hosting service
This can be done on many sites. Read the latest reviews to find out about issues or advances in customer service.
- Be careful here - many sites that comment on the operation of web hosts are owned by these hosts. Therefore, always read the text in small print, or ask for the opinion of a person who has experience with various hosting services.
- You can find reviews on the hosting forum, but in this case, the bad reviews may just be deleted.
Part 3 of 4: Comparing Parameters
Step 1. Find out the amount of space allocated for storing all site content
Content refers to web pages, images, videos, databases and other content. Unless your site is overwhelmed with content, then you will most likely need no more than 100 MB.
- Many hosts provide unlimited space, but you don't need that unless your site is overwhelmed with content. In fact, be careful with such hosting, because it is technically impossible to provide unlimited space, that is, the servers of such a hosting will one day become full, which will lead to a decrease in the speed of your site.
- Make sure you can expand your site with the hosting you choose. It is recommended to consider the fact that your site (that is, its content) can grow by 20% annually. Some hosts add storage space as needed (at your request).
Step 2. Find out the server bandwidth
Bandwidth is the amount of data that is transferred from the server to users. Some hosts provide unlimited bandwidth, while others limit it.
- The amount of bandwidth you use depends on the number of visits to your site and its content. For example, a popular site with a lot of photos will take up more bandwidth than a popular site with text content.
- Unlimited bandwidth is not really such, as you can see from hosts that offer unlimited bandwidth. In most cases, the speed of such hosting is noticeably lower than the speed of hosting that limits the bandwidth.
- Find out what you should do if you exceed your bandwidth limit. Some hosting services charge an additional fee for this, while others take the site offline until the next billing period.
Step 3. Test your connection speed
Server response time is essential to the performance of any site. Connection speed is often related to server bandwidth. If the hosting offers unlimited bandwidth, then it can host so many sites that it will negatively affect the connection speed. Find several sites hosted on the hosting of your choice and test your connection speed.
- On many hosting sites, you will find a list of sites that are advertised as reference sites. Test your connection speed with these sites, but remember that your site's connection speed is likely to be slower.
- To check the connection speed, ping the selected sites. Information about the time of sending packets to the server and receiving them from the server will be displayed.
Step 4. Pay attention to the uptime
This parameter is extremely important for online stores. It is important for customers that the site is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Most hosting sites have 99% uptime; do not trust hosting, the uptime of which is 100%.
The difference between 99% and 99.9% is three days a year during which your site will not work. This is a very significant difference, since during this time you can miss out on good profits
Step 5. Make sure the hosting provides the services and tools you need to manage your site
This includes cPanel, WordPress or another blogging platform, FTP access, analytics, and other tools.
Be sure to check if you can get email on the domain you are registering with
Step 6. Make sure the hosting guarantees security
This is especially important for online stores and other sites that store user information.
Step 7. Find out what operating system the server is running
Most servers run Linux, but some run their own systems written in Microsoft. NET. If you want maximum compatibility, the server must be running Windows.
- If you are new to website development, the server operating system will not play a big role for you.
- Windows Servers are much less secure than Linux.
Part 4 of 4: Hosting Costs
Step 1. Remember that free hosting has restrictions on the services it provides
Sites hosted on free hosting contain advertisements that cannot be removed, and you will not be able to place your advertisements.
Free hosting offers less bandwidth (compared to paid hosting). You will spend more time and effort on solving problems with free hosting than on paying for paid hosting services
Step 2. When comparing paid hosting, pay attention to the cost of additional services that you most likely will not need
In expensive packages, hosting companies include services that are rarely needed. Pay for server reliability and high quality customer service, not for useless features.
Step 3. Remember that quality customer support, which is one of the main aspects when choosing a hosting, is not cheap
Choosing an inexpensive hosting, be prepared for the fact that your service will not be as great as you expected.
Step 4. Don't buy a domain name from a hosting provider
Many hosting providers will offer you to register a domain name for an additional fee. But you can do it for less money on other resources.
Advice
- There are many sites where you can compare hosting providers (if you don't want to do it yourself).
- Take a good look at the guarantees and how your hosting will comply with them.
- Check the legitimacy of the hosting provider by looking for the relevant information in the WHOIS registry. Pay attention to the date of registration of the domain name - if it was registered less than a year ago, look for another hosting.
- Pay attention to the price of site restoration, which is different from the price of hosting the site.
- When choosing hosting, think about price last. Remember, you get what you pay for. Often, with free or very cheap hosting, you will face a lot of problems. But, on the other hand, you shouldn't overpay for very expensive hosting services.
- Read the terms of service carefully.
Warnings
- There are fake hosting review sites. Typically, these sites are affiliated with hosting providers.
- Hosting that offers unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth limits the amount of RAM you use and CPU performance. If your hosting provider can't tell you the exact RAM and CPU performance numbers you can use, get ready for some nasty surprises.
- Don't trust hosting providers with unlimited services - they are often scammers trying to get your attention.
- Think twice before paying straight away for the year. If you paid for a year and are not happy with the service of your chosen hosting provider, you most likely will not switch to another hosting. Therefore, it is best to pay the fees on a monthly basis.
- Check the hosting domain name registration date and read reviews about it. Do not use the services of companies that are too young, even if they make very tempting offers.
- Don't trust hosting providers that offer you to register a domain name for free. Not the fact that they will put you on the WHOIS registry. The owner of a domain is the person whose data is entered in the WHOIS, and not the person who pays for this domain.