Many people are scared by the term “web hosting service” and most of them think that finding the right provider to maintain their blog or website is like nuclear physics.
At AlltusHost, we like to share our beliefs and experience which can help others get more educated on this matter and since we are a web hosting company, we think our opinion matters.
We will point out some of the problems choosing a wrong hosting company can cause, and talk about the criteria that can help you choose the right provider. We will also share some knowledge that can help you choose the most suitable hosting service for your blog or website based on our long years of experience in this field.
What can happen if you chose the wrong hosting service
Loss in revenue and damage to the brand
During the time when a certain website is down, all of the blog posts, services and products on it will be unavailable to potential customers. This means that your company will lose a lot of sales during that time. Amazon’s site recently went down for about 40 minutes and it cost them around 5 million dollars.
Furthermore, it is your obligation as a provider that you allow your customers to visit and browse your site whenever they see fit. If a website of a certain company is down all the time customers will likely never return as they will associate the quality of the site with the quality of service.
Decreased SEO ranking
Search engines like Google release web crawlers that visit websites and collect valuable data which is used to rank that site compared to its related pages.
If a web crawler visits your site repeatedly when it’s down, then Google will drastically decrease the SEO ranking of your site. This will further result in much less visitors on your website from search engines.
Besides low availability, we believe that a slow site can hurt your SEO ranking even more. Your SEO ranking is very important and this is why you can’t afford having anything damage the effectiveness of your SEO campaign.
Low security and bad service
If your web hosting provider offers very limited security measures and limited possibilities for encrypting business or personal data, then your risks of being damaged or attacked will increase drastically. Now, if your provider needs a couple of days to tend to your security problem, you can only imagine how much time, lost revenue and nerves it will cost you.
What to consider when you are choosing a provider
Customer support and the level of service
Customer support is only needed on rare occasions. However when these situations do occur, fast response time and efficient support are essential. Bearing this in mind, it is only natural that you look for a hosting provider that is available 24/7 and can assist you on any technical issue, security or maintenance problem.
If a hosting provider offers multiple ways you can get in contact, that’s even better. Many providers say that they offer accurate and fast support, but you should test their claims by searching information about them online such as customer reviews, which brings us to the next issue.
Customer reviews and reputation
Before you choose anything, I suggest that you perform a complete background check of a certain web hosting company. Find useful information about how long the company exists, customer feedback and credentials, average downtime, maintenance, and for which companies they already provided services.
By doing this, you will get a general idea on whether the customers are happy with that company and its services. Another good way to find out about a company is to do a Google search and see what the average respond time is by making a customer request.
Availability and scalability
One of the first signs that will tell you a web hosting company is good is that they don’t let their customer’s sites go down for a long time. There is no company in the world that can provide 100 % up-time, however most of the good ones have about 99 % average up-time.
When you start your website, it is pretty small in terms of visitors, since over time, you will look to increase the amount of traffic and your blog or website will grow, which is good.
However as your site grows, your hosting needs will as well, and this is why you must find a hosting provider that can upgrade your package easily and scale it to your future needs.
Make sure that you bear in mind these things you learned today when choosing a web hosting service of your own. No matter if you are starting an e-commerce business, a blog or a company website, you will need to have quality web hosting. We sincerely hope that this text will be of great help both to you and your business.
The author is highly qualified and writes blog posts weekly.
