How to Find the Right Hosting for Your Company

Among the thousands of web hosting companies offering you the “best” service, it’s hard to choose the company to patronize as your web host. Choosing a web host is an important decision to make, especially that web hosts are one of the fundamentals in keeping your site, alive.

In selecting a web hosting service, we primarily consider the features that come with the cost. We love freebies, we love cheap prices. As soon as we get a lot of freebies for a good price, we immediately consider their service above the others.

Although we cannot deny that there are some good hosting companies that offer affordable packages, most of the time we are blinded by promos and coupons tricking us to believe that we indeed have saved a lot, but in the long run, we may incur expenses especially if we selected a bad host.

Selecting a bad web host can negatively influence your website; oftentimes, cheap hosting sites offer good, tempting deals. These tempting deals can seduce you into subscribing; we know how attractive it is to save a lot of money! However, you get what you pay for; that is, cheap hosting for a cheap price.

Why bother? Here’s how crappy web hosting can ruin your website:

• It can ruin your SEO efforts. Yeah you provide the best content, you have implemented Technical SEO well enough in your website; all of these are wasted with a bad web host. Inefficient web hosting leads to increase in downtime and slower loading times. Site speed is a ranking signal; think of site speed as a booster pack in your efforts to rank your site.
• Security issues. Cheap web hosting platforms are more susceptible to malware attacks. Bad hosting usually has weak defenses against malware. For example, once your site has been detected as infected by Google, they will tag you as an infected site, and it prevents users to proceed to your website.
• Useless traffic. With a dysfunctional website, your marketing campaign efforts are useless as well. Attracting a large number of visitors to your site will not yield results for your campaign.

How do you determine the good from the bad? How can we weed out false advertisements from its true face value?

There are three things you should consider in choosing a good web host company. You should consider a host’s performance, how fair their price is, and how well their support is in coping with questions or complaints. Don’t be blinded by the perks they offer, be a wise consumer with these tips!

How Good is their Performance?

• Uptime vs Downtime. A web host company should offer 99.99% uptime as part of their guarantee. Why 99.99%? Does that seem far fetched? 99% uptime equates to about seven hours of downtime each month, which equals about three and a half days each year. Imagine, 3 ½ days that your site won’t have service. Imagine all the lost opportunities!
• Loading speed can be under 500ms. Your host plays a big role in the loading speed of your website. Although there are site elements that can largely affect this, at least your web host can support your site and aim for this half-second rule. Google has determined this duration as the optimal site loading speed for websites.
• Go for unmetered, NOT UNLIMITED. Unmetered disk space and bandwidth offers are better than unlimited. More often, unlimited disk space and bandwidth offer these kind of deals: “Yes we offer unlimited bandwidth, with the first 15GB free of charge!” This means that the rest is charged to your account, whether per additional GB or another.

Do they offer Competitive Pricing?

• Affordably reasonable pricing. The top web host providers actually offer decent shared hosting plans for under $5 per month, averaging at $3 per month.
• A FREE domain is appreciated, and one of the common perks offered with the hosting service. During significant promos, they also offer discounts on domain registrations, transfers, and SSLs.
• How much is it the next few years after? Renewal fees should be listed out; some companies enable registrants to select the duration of their registration, spanning from a year up to 12 years. If you’re on a tight budget, you can avail for a yearly renewal plan. Properly check your cart before checking out. A basic hosting plan should include the following, or offer them as an additional option: Privacy Protection, SSL Certificate (optional), ICANN, and even a private email.
• 30-Day Money Back Guarantee. You have the opportunity to test their service. If you don’t like what you get, you can always back out. Always look for this guarantee.

How Do They Deal with Support?

• Live Chat Support. Who doesn’t love instant replies? A live chat support can get your problems solved sooner. If they have a Frequently Asked Questions page, the better.
• Details such as business name and address should be available in the site, so you can confirm if they are a legitimate business, and not some fly-by-night company just trying to get your money.

Judging from these qualifications, you can now select the best web hosting company for your website.

Do you have more tips on how to choose the best hosting for your site? Tell us in the comments!