One of the first things to consider when deciding to build your own online presence, whether for personal or business reasons, is the choice of hosting service provider. So this time we will focus on selecting the best providers for a fee.
Many people, when faced with the choice of hosting, ask themselves few questions: How much is it? Although they may be completely legitimate questions, the parameters to consider for evaluating and comparing different hosting providers are many.
What features should a good hosting service provider have?
The first advice is to not concentrate solely on local language hosting, and in this way you will have access to a wider choice of providers. Furthermore, since there are more providers in English, the price factor benefits enormously, since to be competitive, hosting providers must offer excellent services at relatively low prices. Let’s move on to the technical part: the best hosting providers must offer unlimited space and the possibility of creating unlimited mySQL databases in addition to linux hosting which is usually preferred when it comes to creating websites or blogs with WordPress. Now the best suppliers offer user-friendly control panels without having to pay third parties to manage their site (or sites).
From the control panel, you can install CMS in a few clicks, create new email accounts, manage existing ones, add subdomains, access to the statistics of your site, website builders, etc. In short, everything you need to create, manage and grow your website. The “big” usually use two types of control panel software: cPanel and Plesk. It is not difficult to understand that maybe you go to pay slightly more for a hosting with all these features, but being able to manage everything independently, you go to save in outsourcing.
To be even more specific and demanding, a good hosting must be compatible with WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Moodle, depending on the type of technology you will use to create your website. It must also offer the possibility of creating an automatic backup copy and periodically, it must be monitored 24/7/365 (i.e., always), it must support the possibility of uploading (uploading) audio and video files, pdfs, offer FTP access and provide technical assistance always, quickly and efficiently. We say this is part of the basic package of the best hosting providers, but the more they have, the better.
How to choose the hosting provider
- Check the uptime they offer you. The uptime is basically the time your site is online without interruptions. Look for a value close to 99% and beware of 100%. Some cloud hosting offers an uptime of around 99.99%, and this is due to the fact that if there are problems, your site will be moved to another server.
- Bandwidth: The more traffic you receive, the more broadband you need, so check this parameter when choosing.
- A good hosting should give you the opportunity to switch from your plan to a higher level in case you need it in the future (if you need more ram, more space, more resources).
Finally we return to the price factor. The main providers offer “satisfied or refunded” guarantees that can vary from 30 to 60 days, thus having the opportunity to test and change them if you are not satisfied. Read the contracts well if there are any, but there are usually no permanence restrictions. Furthermore, many hosting providers offer the possibility of paying monthly.
To top it off, let’s see a list of the top 5 …
- DreamHost
- HostMonster
- BlueHost
- JustHost
- HostGator
