Web Hosting
Cannot decide which web hosting to select for Your Blog or Small business. online web presence is quite important for success. Websites are no longer just visiting cards, Website is online business addresses that can generate currencies be it social or financial.
Incorrect web hosting can lead to slow speeds, security issues, and can even crash your complete web presence. So it doesn’t matter if you are starting up or a seasoned expert sudden loss due to technical faults can lead to severe business damages needless to say the stay recovery sometimes can be very exhausting when other websites are competing for your keywords every second.
Blogging is an excellent way to conquer the world, be it a small website or a business website, everyone is seeking attention to their desired audience. Blogging is not just putting content online, it requires a lot of research and topical authority. And when you put so much effort you would require a platform that would enable you to put your idea across in best way possible.
We will discuss what should be the best platform for every entrepreneur. Web hosting purchase can be critical but once you read the article below you will understand it better and make your hosting purchase decision more logically.
What is the domain?
In Laymen term when you type the name in the address bar of a browser to access a particular website that name is called a domain name. Each Domain Name is mapped with an IP address
Every single computer in this world has a unique IP address to distinguish it from the other systems. But the problem with the IP address is that they are difficult to remember and to remove these difficulty domain names were created.
What is CPanel?
Website and Server management can be tricky to simplify the hassles, a graphical user interface is developed. CPanel is a short form for Control Panel, A control panel to manage website and hosting server. CPanel is a third party application and usually provided for free by website hosting companies. CPanel allows user to manage, domains, redirections, emails, file manager, PHP version, software platform installation and many more in easy to understand interface.
What is web hosting?
Web hosting can be thought of as a space that contains all the files for your website. In technical terms, this space is known as a server. You can think of servers as a home tour of your website.
The servers that are used for hosting are effective in terms of performance, and they are responsible for how your website’s response when someone tries to access it using their network.
A web host is responsible for delivering your website’s content that can include images, text and videos to someone when they try to access your website or enter your website’s URL into their personal system’s browser. Users cannot access your website if you don’t have a web host.
Who Manages these Servers?
Servers are managed by the networking experts who can handle the technical aspects of a seamless transition between hardware and software.
These experts are also responsible for managing certain aspects that are necessary for websites like security, support, bandwidth and even the response time of the site and much more. They are also well equipped in handling any sort of error that occurs on your website.
If you think that you are capable enough of managing the server on your own and you don’t want to pay that extra fees for the expert, then you can also opt for the hosting plan in which you are responsible for managing your server on your own.
Why web hosting is crucial for entrepreneurs?
Entrepreneurs are usually budding businessmen who are willing to go the extra mile to achieve their goals. For any business, IT plays an important role and digital rise led to the internet marketing storm. Internet marketing is mostly dependent upon the search traffic that is driven by search engines to websites.
Every website has the potential to become a lead generation machine but this machine requires quality backend support that solely relies upon the web hosting.
Types of Web Hosting
There are many types of web hosting ranging in features from handling everything from a simple website with few numbers of daily visitors to processing an application with thousands of visitors daily.
You need to choose a plan that would best suit your needs and requirements. Following are the types of web hosting along with their features, you can select the one that best suits your needs and demands among them:
Personal Web Hosting
If you are looking for a hosting for your blog, then you can choose this hosting because the number of daily visitors is not very high.
Generally speaking, there are no issues of uptime in case of personal blogs the traffic is steady and is not that high that it would crash the server.
Business Web Hosting
A business website is much more demanding than a personal blog. Therefore the hosting for business websites would require more resources like CPU, Ram and disk space to function smoothly and provide good performance. Some business websites have a large number of daily visitors there such sites need to have better performance hosting that would be able to handle a large amount of incoming traffic without facing any downtime.
Shared Web Hosting
If you don’t have a high amount of traffic on your website, then you can go ahead with this. It is usually the cheapest option available for you, and in this, you will be sharing the server along with many other users. In shared hosting, your website’s data is stored on a server that is shared by several other websites also. So in case even if a single site is hacked or there’s some issue in even a unique website, it will affect the whole server and bring it down.
If a website becomes popular and starts attracting a lot of traffic, then it can handle then it also starts using the resources of other sites present on that server subsequently affecting the performance of different websites.
Cloud-Based Web Hosting
Cloud hosting is a relatively new technology that uses several individual servers (often hundreds of them) that work together as one giant server Scaling is the most significant advantage of using cloud-based hosting. At any instant, if you want to increase your resources, then you can do it instantly.
If your website starts getting more traffic and you feel like expanding your resources then you can ask your provider for the same and all they have to do simply allocate you more disk space and bandwidth and then you are good to go with accommodating the increased number of traffic smoothly.
One more advantage of using cloud-based hosting is that your website never goes down, and therefore you can provide a smooth experience to your users.
VPS Hosting
It stands for virtual private hosting, and it is just an extension of the shared web hosting plan. The difference between the two is that in VPS hosting a server acts like several different servers. Therefore you will be getting a specific part of the server for you, and consequently, other website’s performance or load won’t have any effect on your website.
Dedicated Web Server Hosting
If you want to have an entire server for your website, then you can go ahead with this dedicated web hosting. In this case, only your website’s data will be stored on the server.
The most significant advantage of this is that you have complete control over the server. You can go ahead with the installation of complicated scripts that won’t be available in other shared hostings.
Dedicated servers are best for those websites that have thousands of daily visitors on their website.
Colocation Web Hosting
In colocation web hosting you can rent a space in the data center rack, and then you can go ahead with your server hardware. You will pay according to the bandwidth that you use every month.
The most significant advantage of using colocation web hosting is that you can use any OS of your choice and you can even increase your resources at any point of time according to your needs and install any software that you want as per your requirement.
The drawback of using this hosting is that since you own that particular rack in that data center, therefore you are responsible for any software issue or hardware issue.
Consequently, this type of web hosting is not recommended for beginners because you are on your own for everything.
Free web hosting
If you are tight on budget and save yourself from the expense of having a web hosting you can always opt for a free web hosting plan, although it’s not a recommended one.
Disadvantages of free web hosting
There are certain disadvantages of having a free web hosting that you should look upon before making your mind for going with the open hosting plan
● The hosting’s providers name will be included in your domain name. Therefore it will make your brand look less professional.
● They do not guarantee excellent performance.
● Many free hosting companies display ads that are irrelevant to your website and thus it affects your website’s SEO.
● They offer very limited disc space and bandwidth and they don’t even provide the feature of upgrading.
WordPress Hosting( Most suited for bloggers and small business)
If you are someone who is looking for a smooth hosting experience, then you can go ahead with WordPress hosting.
Advantages of Managed WordPress hosting
There are certain benefits of using managed WordPress hosting:
● The themes, plugins will always be updated.
● Your website will be secured
● You will get the automatic backup feature
● You can contact WordPress support for any type of help.
if you are using WordPress for your business website, then there are several benefits that you will enjoy
● Some servers are specially configured for WordPress therefore if there is a sudden increase in the traffic then also your website performance will remain unaffected.
● There is an extra layer of security provided so that your data and your customer’s data are always safe from any kind of theft.
● If you get any error, then your problem will be resolved quickly by the WordPress team.
● In case of any misfortune, you are safe from losing your data as your data is backed regularly.
What are the disadvantages of using managed WordPress hosting?
There are two disadvantages of using managed WordPress hosting. One problem is that it’s expensive since it comes with a lot of features.
The second disadvantage is that if in future you want to move your website to some other hosting, then it’s not possible.
E-Commerce hosting service
Many web hosting providers like WP Engine Provide E-commerce hosting that are responsible for providing e-commerce specifications to your website so if you are planning to have an e-commerce store then it is a good idea to look for an e-commerce hosting service provider.
What are features that should be provided by the eCommerce hosting provider?
Before making a purchase decision for an eCommerce hosting provider, you should look for these features in the hosting provider :
● Look for the SSL certificates
● Check for database support
● Check if it has shopping cart software
● Be sure if it has smooth payment processing services
● Make sure it provides you one-click eCommerce specifications
● It should contain e-commerce security measures
● It should be equipped with Caching technology and CDN integrations
● It comes with Domain name registrations facility
● It should provide you with the facility of daily backups and secure restore options
● PCI compliant servers
● It should have a 24/7 support system
What are the essential hosting features?
While selecting a hosting plan, you should keep in mind about the features and functionalities that are required by your website for better performance. These are some of the essential features that you should be looking forward to while deciding on the web hosting purchase.
Bandwidth
This is the most crucial point to consider while buying a web hosting server. You should select the bandwidth as per your requirement depending upon the amount of data that you
I want to transfer from one point to another.
Every hosting provider has one plan in which it promises unlimited bandwidth.
What does the unlimited bandwidth mean in actual?
If you are planning for an unlimited bandwidth package, then your host promises you with features of hosting an unlimited number of websites, upload as many files as you want, and create as many email addresses as you want.
But the reality is something different, it’s unlimited only till other website’s performance is not affected by your site.
For example, Bluehost gives you a usage limit for CPU, and if you cross that usage limit, then it will take control of your hosting account, and if you overuse the CPU, then the i page will suspend your account. Also Site ground gives you only 20 GB of storage limit. Also, site ground only offers 20 GB of storage and Bluehost only offers 50 GB, on the other hand, storage provided by iPage and InMotion Hosting is unlimited.
So, you should go through the terms and conditions properly before making a purchase decision.
Coding language Support for developers and Coders
Many hosting providers give support for several programming languages and databases like
● PHP
● Python
● Ruby
● MySQL
If you have a windows hosting plan, then you will get support over
● ASP.NET
● ASP
● NET framework
● MS SQL
Security and Backup features
Generally, the shared hosting providers won’t provide you with a backup facility; therefore if you are using shared hosting, then you are on your own to backing up your data.
Some sites like SiteGround do provide advanced backup services like firewall protection and recovery by charging extra money for those features.
SSL Encryption
SSL stands for secure socket layer. It is responsible for creating a secure layer between the user’s browser and your website. If you are using a user’s personal information, your website must have an SSL certificate so that hackers cannot use personal data for their benefits.
Content Delivery Network?
A content delivery network is a distributed network of n number of servers. For example: If someone is trying to access information from your website, then it will send the information to the user from the data centre that is located nearest to the user’s location. Thus it makes content delivery extremely fast.
Think of it as ordering food from a national brand outlet but your food will be delivered to you from your nearest outlet.
Most of the businesses use CDN because they have an audience that is distributed throughout the world. Many web-hosting providers, such as Siteground offer CDN integration with their hosting packages.
Uptime and Downtime of website
Website uptime is the time for which your website is accessible by your users. It is crucial to have a good website uptime because only when your site is available can it be accessible by the user who wants to read the content from your website or buy something from your website.
On the other hand, if your website is facing a high downtime, then it won’t be a pleasant experience for the user’s, and as a result, it may happen that the users won’t use your service again because of the poor experience they had this time.
There are certain web hosting providers that guarantee you a maximum uptime for your website like Media Temple that promises 99.99% uptime and even promises to refund 20% of your monthly hosting fee for every 20 minutes of Downtime.
Customer service support
Before purchasing any web hosting service, you should make sure that the web hosting provider has an excellent reputation for their customer service support. There will be times when your website will run into some problems and would require the help of hosting expertise.
Moreover, if you are running an e-commerce store and you have high traffic on your website, it’s a must-have thing in case if you ever run into a problem. Make sure that there is 24/7 support available. By the hosting providers.
Check for the number of Customer Support Channels
Make sure that the support service has multiple channels for providing support like
● Resolving issues through Chat
● Phone call system
● Contacting for assistance through email
● Resolving issue through a dedicated ticket system
Conclusion:-
You cannot go wrong with certain web hosting companies like Siteground, WPengine and InMotion Hosting. However, it is an appropriation to weigh in all options. It is a fact that most of the hosting purchases are either underutilized or overutilized. Seldom only people get what they pay for.
Above mentioned parameters will help you make your decisions.