What Features to Look For in Website Hosting Services

1. Speed

Speed is critical for your site ranking. It will also earn satisfaction from the visitors or users of your site, increasing the conversion rates.

It’s essential to remember that your website speed will affect every aspect of the business. Therefore, look for a host that will provide for speed on your website.

You could decide to start at a low subscription plan whose speed is sufficient for your needs. However, consider the availability of higher speed upon upgrades when your business will have grown. 

You will want the speed on your website to accelerate its growth. I strongly advise you to choose a host that will allow your site to maintain excellent speeds even under high traffic.

2. Uptime

Nobody wants their website to be unavailable most of the time that customers are seeking your services. In fact, you would possibly dream of having a website with 100% uptime. But his is not practical.

Most of the host companies understand website uptime is the most critical component of a website and that their customers will make losses or gain an audience when their sites are down. Therefore, they guarantee up to 99.99% uptime.

When choosing a hosting company, you should avoid promises that don’t guarantee a measurable uptime. This will decrease uncertainties regarding the downtime on your website and assure you of the reliability of the web hosting services.

3. Cost

When choosing a web host, avoid making decisions on a price basis. There are cheap web hosting options out there, but they will end up frustrating you on service delivery. 

But this does not mean that you spend overly on web hosting. Find a site that charges averagely with an excellent service guarantee.

I also recommend avoiding distraction by promotional messages by a few companies because such offers are only available when you are new to their site.

4. Customer Support

Customer support is one of the most important factors to consider when choosing a hosting service provider. Although a host can have excellent features and technical capabilities, poor customer support will cause you frustrations.

You need someone to help you out when you get stranded or unsure about what you’re doing. In other cases, you could be faced with security concerns or challenges using some features. 

When that happens, you need prompt and responsive customer support. Lack of good support could lead to loss of revenues.

5. Scalability

Depending on your business type, you might realize the need for scaling your performance when requested and rescale when the demand wanes.  

For example, you could be running online retail where demand increases at a particular season of the year. In such a case, your host must respond by scaling you up and then down later when the demand is low. 

Look for the web hosting service providers who will support this capability of your business demands.  

How Does Website Hosting Work? 

Web hosting occurs when the files in a personal computer are uploaded to a web server from a local computer. 

This server has such components as hard drive space, RAM, and bandwidth allocated to the websites using it. 

The server resources are divided based on the selected hosting plan. The plans differ from one another on the ease of access, functions supported, and cost. 

The three principal web hosting plans include:

• Shared Hosting;
• Virtual Private Servers; and 
• Dedicated Servers. 

Shared hosting is where the server resources are shared with other users. It is similar to renting a workstation in a noisy, busy, open office where other people work. It is suitable for small and upcoming businesses. 

Virtual Private Servers (VPS) are different from shared hosting because they are isolated from each other. They are suitable for medium businesses and allow individual users to organize their businesses independently. 

Dedicated Servers are more comprehensive and expensive. It suits those who value high performance and reliability. Users control the entire space and determine the configurations they need within the huge space under their command. 

Cloud software is best for web hosting because it will facilitate maintenance of the website resources in multiple virtual servers in the cloud. 

It will also be extremely easy to set up a website with cloud storage. Besides, you can enjoy faster deployment if you’re looking to start hosting on the cloud immediately.  

Summary

Based on my experience and detailed review of the various web hosting service providers, my #1 recommendation is Bluehost hosting services. 

I have selected this host because of its robust security features and excellent speed. 

Similar hosts with matching capabilities are usually much more expensive, which is why I recommend Bluehost.  

However, you’re free to choose the best option for you from our list of web host services based on your specific needs and budget. 

Remember to check such features as speed, uptime, cost, customer support, and scalability when choosing a host. 

Good luck with building your website.