Everyone needs a website. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do, you need to market your business on the internet. Why? – Well, because it’s the biggest and best-profiled market in the world. Simple as that. If you don’t invest in your web presence, you’re basically saying: “Nah, I don’t want to make money. I don’t want my potential clients to find me or know anything about my business.”
Although it may seem like a two-minute job, creating a website is no easy task. Apart from the obvious technical details, you need to figure out how your site will look, where you are gonna host it, what kind of content you will be producing, are you planning to educate people or are you just interested in putting your business out there, what kind of service will your website offer, who’s your desired audience, etc.
There are millions of questions you need to answer before you can introduce your website to the world. To cut things down a bit, this time we’re gonna focus just on one layer of this big cake. In this article, we’re gonna help you recognize what kind of hosting package is ideal for your web project.
Getting Started
When you’re finally ready to upload your data, photos, apps and start communicating your message with the world, it’s time to find a good hosting company that can put it all on the web for you, give you the right tools, digital space, bandwidth and support you need in order to make your website look and feel great.
Choosing a web host can be a tricky thing, mainly because there are so many companies out there to choose from. Although it’s tempting to select a free hosting service for your website, there are A LOT of factors that suggest that you’d be making the worst possible choice for yourself and your business.
Selecting the right web hosting company is one of the most important tasks you have to perform when working on your website. It can be difficult for inexperienced webmasters to find the right hosting plan for their website without asking for help.
There are so many hosting companies on the web that offer all sorts of different deals. Some of them are good, and some of them are just awful.
This can get a bit overwhelming for those who don’t really know what they want, and what kind of package will best suit their needs.
Luckily for you, we’re here to help. Follow our five step plan if you want to choose the right hosting package for your website.
Step 1: Determine What Kind Of Website You’ll Be Running
What does your website do? Are you creating a blog, a personal web corner or a corporate site? Are you setting up a webshop, or maybe a web magazine? Are you planning to share your personal thoughts on it just for fun, or are you creating a place of business? – These are just some of the questions that determine what your website will be all about.
After answering these questions, you can start thinking about just how big of a hosting package you’ll really need.
Step 2: Think About Potential Growth
If you plan to rapidly grow your business and get a huge number of visitors every single day, then you should probably focus on bigger and more powerful hosting packages. You don’t want to deal with a really slow website who tends to go down.
When choosing a hosting plan for your business, always try to think about the future. You never want to see yourself stranded in the dead end street.
Step 3: What Type of Server Will You Get?
Most hosting companies offerLinux/Unix and Windows servers. People are constantly arguing on the internet which one is better, but the truth is that both of these are just fine. It all depends on what you’re planning to do with your server.
Step 4: Educate Yourself – Learn About the Standard Packages Most Hosting Companies Offer Their Clients.
There are four types of paid hosting most companies offer: shared, co-located hosting, vps, dedicated hosting.
Shared hosting is the most popular option. Most people go for this deal because it’s the cheapest. This sort of service implies that you’re sharing a server with other customers of your hosting provider. The host manages the server, but he also gives you the opportunity to manage your server via control panel. Shared hosting is a solid deal for those who are just starting and have small audiences. In the long run, they should focus on more serious deals.
Co-location hosting is a service where someone else holds the server hardware that you provided and gives it an internet connection. He or she placed it in a secure facility designed with resources which include a secure cage or cabinet, regulated power, dedicated Internet connection, security and support.
These co-location facilities offer the customer a secure place to physically house their hardware and equipment as opposed to locating it in their offices or warehouse where the potential for fire, theft or vandalism is much greater.
In this scenario, the provider is not responsible for the support and maintenance of your server. Some providers offer maintenance services for additional cost, but most of them don’t.
A virtual private server (VPS) is a virtual machine sold as a service by an Internet hosting service. A VPS runs its own copy of an operating system, and customers have superuser-level access to that operating system instance, so they can install almost any software that runs on that OS.
The term Dedicated hosting refers to the service where you lease an entire server just for yourself. By paying for it, you get full access to all its resources. You can host as many sites on it as you wish. It’s up to you. If you own a website that gets a lot of traffic and needs some serious disk space – then this is the best solution for you.
Dedicated hosting deals tend to be a bit more expensive, but they’re worth the money. Providers usually offer full maintenance and over the clock support for customers who end up going for this sort of deal, so they don’t need to worry about anything except what they’ll be posting on their site.
All these packages can be managed and unmanaged. It all depends on what you want your host to provide you with 24/7 support, or not.
Step 5: Read About Your Hosting Provider On The Internet, Before You Decide to Do Business With Him
As I wrote above, there are a lot of hosting companies out there. Some of them offer amazing services, while others tend to do more harm than good. Most of these bad ones suffer from bad PR on the web, so it’s quite easy for anyone who’s interested to find all sorts of reviews and see just with whom they’re doing business.
NOTE: A lot of people tend to write unjustified bad reviews out of spite or some other illogical reasons. So, if you see a bad review about a specific provider that you’re interested in doing business with, be sure to first check if all those allegations are backed by solid facts.
Now that you understand the differences between hosting packages, you can sit down and figure out which one works best for your website.
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The author is highly qualified and writes blog posts weekly.
