If you have an online business, you need to ensure that you choose the best host for your site. There are many different hosting companies in the market and it can be confusing and overwhelming to select the best out of the whole lot. However, there are some tips that can help you choose the best host.
Here are 5 tips that you will find useful when it comes to choosing the best host for your site:
Storage
A website requires storage space to store the content, images, data, documents and everything else. Hence, storage space is very important when choosing a host. Ideally, your host should be able to provide you more storage than you actually require. This will serve two purposes. First, if your users download and upload a lot of data, it will not have an adverse effect on the bandwidth. Second, if your online business grows in the future, you will not have to spend more money to buy additional storage space on the server. Most hosting providers offer a variety of packages that have different storage space. It is advisable to check all packages and make a decision not just on your current storage requirement, but also your future storage needs.
Bandwidth
The size of data, which is uploading and downloading of content, images, files, databases, that users of a website get for a month is known as bandwidth. If your website is graphic heavy, contains many audio and video files, users will download more data. Hence, you will require more bandwidth for your website. On the other hand, if your website is small and just contains text, there will not be too much download of data. So you will not require too much bandwidth. If you anticipate that you will get many users on a daily basis that will upload and download data, you require high bandwidth. So be sure to check the bandwidth too. If you exceed your bandwidth, your website will be temporarily unavailable to your users as well as search engine spiders. This can have an adverse effect on your website ranking, traffic and revenue generation.
Technical Support
This support is extremely important if your site crashes or there is server maintenance. You should look for a hosting company that offers you support round the clock, responds to your queries quickly and helps you resolve issues related to hosting. After all, if your website is down, it will not be accessible. This will have a direct effect on your revenue generation.
Control Panel
Be sure to find out about the hosting company’s control panel. This panel allows you to check storage space and bandwidth, create subdomains and databases, manage subdomains, and log onto FTP accounts. You want a control panel that is easy to administer and is user-friendly. This will make your task of managing your website and uploading text, images and other content very easy.
Blogs
Find out whether the hosting company supports blogs, like WordPress. Today, blogs are a wonderful way to drive traffic to your website and you can use it to improve brand recognition and provide interesting and educative articles for users, who will then want to visit your website. Blogs can help increase traffic and new sales. Some hosts do not allow blogs, while others do. So if you want a blog to improve the presence of your website, you should look for a host that supports blogs.
Bonus Tip
If your website grows, you may require several subdomains. In which case, it is important to find out how many domains and subdomains the host allows. You need a host that partners you in your growth.