On top of that, the best hosting company for one situation won’t necessarily be the best for another. So, when evaluating your hosting options, make sure to consider these five tips.
Know Your Needs
Before you even look at a single hosting company you should know at least the basics of what type of services you will need. Are you looking to host a small, personal blog? If so, you don’t need a dedicated server or other ‘high-end’ options. Are you a business that relies on your website for success? If so, you need hosting that is focused on stability and even offers hosting in multiple locations to avoid outages. Take some time to really evaluate your needs, and then start searching for the best hosting company to meet them.
Ready for Growth
Moving from one hosting company to another isn’t nearly as difficult as it was in the past, but the fact remains, it is inconvenient. To the extent possible, you want to make sure that you choose a hosting company that will offer options to upgrade your services as you need them. When evaluating a potential hosting company, make sure they can meet your needs today, and accommodate expected growth over the coming years. Even if you aren’t going to be focused on attracting lots of new visitors, it is better to have the option to expand if you need it than to have to start shopping for a new hosting company after a few months.
Location Location Location
One of the most important factors to consider when choosing a web hosting company is the geographic location of the data center where your site will be housed. A good hosting company will make it easy to find exactly where its facilities are located. If they have multiple data centers, they should let you choose which one you want. Choose a hosting company that will house your site in a data center that is near where you expect most of your visitors to come from. This will help improve the speed of your site, the stability, and more.
Don’t Skimp on Security
Hackers and other ‘bad guys’ on the Internet make billions of dollars each year exploiting websites. No matter what type of site you are looking to run, it is critical that it is kept secure. Finding a reputable hosting company that can keep your site secure will help you to avoid many different problems. When looking at web hosting security you will want to make sure your hosting company has good physical security at their data centers, DDoS protection, backup services, and more.
Learn from Experts and Real Users
Once you have narrowed your list of options down to a dozen or fewer, you will want to really dig into each one to determine which has the best reputation. The best way to do this is to read reviews written by experts in the hosting industry and reviews written by real users of the hosting companies in question. This type of service is the easiest way to make sure you choose the best web hosting companies for your particular situation.