It is hard for a modern business to thrive without the web hosting service. You have developed your website and now you are ready to launch or probably you are thinking of changing host. You need to make your products and services available to the global market. Therefore, you need a reliable host who will present you there. With so many companies providing cheap and free web hosting, it can be tricky choosing the right one for your business. In fact, with the kind of marketing done by some of these providers, you could easily give in to a company that you’d not have thought of in the first place. You’ll realize that often, a paid host is by far more beneficial.
But what do you look for in a web hosting company?
You have a host of things to consider when giving preference to a web hosting company.
Their storage capacity
You must get in touch with the support representatives who should advise on the amount of space you need, depending on the purpose of your website. Firstly, you’ll need to know the amount of storage the provider has. Some would offer unlimited volumes and of course with some conditions while others offer a few GB, which could be enough for your purpose.
The bandwidth
Some web hosting companies will charge you for the cumulative data used by your website visitors uploading and downloading in a specific period of time- normally one month. Once the bandwidth is exhausted, they will charge you per the MBs used or the number of visitors to your website. Therefore, you must be careful to choose the option that best suits you. If it hosts multimedia or allows for frequent downloads and uploads, then you must be careful to choose the appropriate service.
The features in their Email and E-Commerce
In a web-hosting plan, email accounts are an integral bit. The host needs to tell you the many free email accounts they’ll allow you to set up. The sending/ receiving interface and the ability to integrate with other email programs like Yahoo and Gmail is something you must take note. In fact, for a starter website, the number of accounts and ability to integrate with Gmail is more important than so much tech stuff that you may not utilize at all. For an e-commerce website, you must confirm the availability of key features like; dedicated IP, SSL certification, and one-click software installation. Your web developer should be in a condition to advise on some of the other pertinent features.
The number of Domains and Subdomains
You probably are running a website that might need a blog, thus you will need a Subdomain. Again, your site could turn very successful and therefore you’d need another one. It’d be painful for you to have the two sites hosted separately. Therefore, ensure that the web hosting UK service provider would let you host multiple domains from a single dashboard. A pertinent question here would be; how many domains and Subdomains will they allow you to manage from one account?
Confirm on the uptime
There is always the probability of failure for anything supported by machines. Clients’ websites might experience downtimes due to a power outage, failure of equipment or internet blackout. The hosting company must assure you of compensation in case of prolonged downtime. Do some thorough work and find out how long their downtimes have lasted and whether the affected clients were adequately compensated. An excellent web host must ensure a 99.999% downtime or better.
With an endless list of the features that you must go for, the above are critical in ensuring that your customers are upbeat every time they visit your site. Moreover, your web developer should guide you through other intricacies that are necessary have for a perfect Web Hosting service provider.