All novice users who are not familiar with many of web hosting often focus on companies that provide the most affordable packages with the most features. However, this is a wrong strategy, as you have to focus on your needs first, and then on the price. For example, most web developers I know often focus on packages that provide high bandwidth and security.
Most of the technical features of web hosting companies may seem a bit complicated. However, you do not need to worry, because with just a few minutes of your time, you will be able to acquire the necessary knowledge to choose the right web hosting companies and packages.
Capacity and RAM
Disk space is undoubtedly one of the most important things to look for in any web hosting package. The more space you have, the more photos, videos, music, documents and other types of files you can upload to your website, the more plugins and themes you can install in WordPress and so on.
For a small or new website, packages that provide up to 10GB of capacity are ideal for a good start. However, there are web hosting companies that provide up to unlimited space in some of their packages. As for the VPS and Dedicated packages, in them you choose the space and you can increase it at any time in the future. Finally, prefer only web hosting companies that either provide SSDs or operate as cloud hosting, which is even faster and more reliable.
As for RAM, they work in the same way that RAM works on your computer / laptop, mobile and tablet. The more RAM a web hosting package has, the more efficient it will be, as these memories come directly with the hard drives to increase the loading speed of the pages.
Bandwidth and Data Transfers
In terms of the speed of your website, bandwidth refers to the amount of data that will be downloaded or uploaded from a website. Also known as data transfer, bandwidth affects how quickly visitors to your website access information. The higher the bandwidth, the more people can see your website at the same time, in real time.
Uptime Rates and Reliability
Every professional knows that time is money. Every minute a website is down, it can lose a lot of people, a lot of money and SEO scores in the search engines. In 2017, for example, Amazon estimated that it lost about $ 150 million because its website was in trouble and was down for about three to four hours.
Most web hosting companies often provide a certain percentage of uptime in all their packages. However, 99% are wrong. Uptime is essentially how many days and hours your website is continuously available without the server being down. Currently, cloud hosting packages are the most reliable as the website runs from the cloud and is shared on hundreds of servers.
Security and Support
Although the security of a website depends mainly on its administrator and how strong passwords he has put and the security measures he has taken, the hosting company that hosts your website should also have taken the necessary security measures. Over 40% of websites that are attacked or hacked were because of web hosting companies. Therefore, make sure that the hosting company that hosts you includes firewalls, monitoring services and additional security add-ons. It should also keep daily backups.
Support is just as important. Think, for example, that at four o’clock in the morning, a day when you decided to deal a little more with your website, you suddenly see that it is down. The first thing you should do, if you did not make a change and it fell, is to contact the web hosting company. If the company does not provide 24/7 technical support, or does not operate on weekends, then you are at great risk. Your website may be down for a few hours to a few days.
Understanding the cost factor of web hosting packages
While cost is definitely an important part of your final decision, do not sacrifice cost for speed and technical support.Also, do not forget to look for all the offers that each web hosting company has, as along with a package you can obtain a domain name and an SSL certificate. Usually, the offers are only available in packages that you buy for at least one year.
Why free hosting packages are a bad choice?
There are several web hosting companies that provide you with free web hosting packages by purchasing a domain name. However, these packages are so limited that it is not even worth looking at, let alone using.
Aside from the fact that most free hosting packages provide too little capacity, they often lack technical support, lack the most basic features of business packages, and often lack security.
Cheap services are a reliable choice
Since a company can have up to thousands of customers in just one shared server, it is much easier for them to buy and add business features to their packages. Therefore, most shared hosting packages include automatic daily backups, various website builders, eCommerce tools, among others.
The fact that a service provides very cheap packages does not necessarily mean that their packages are not good or their servers are not fast, but it is about the way the company operates. Some companies prefer to target mass sales rather than the few and expensive.