You’ve read enough articles and heard enough advice from so-called experts to know that you need a host for your new blog or website. But what you probably don’t know is that not all web hosts are created equal. In fact, there’s a significant amount of disparity between the top and bottom.
Why Choosing a Hosting Provider Matters
Web hosting isn’t something you think about when you wake up in the morning, and it definitely isn’t something you dream about at night. But web hosting matters a tremendous amount.
If you want to grow your blog or website, then you must understand the significance of hosting. This will allow you to be meticulous in your vetting of different providers. Let’s check out a few specific reasons why it matters.
- Uptime
Website downtime is extremely dangerous. It can be costly and damaging to the brand. Consider that Amazon once experienced two hours of downtime and that single outage cost the company $3.48 million. While you may not have nearly that much at stake, the threat of extended downtime is still dangerous. Could you sustain an entire day or week without service? Probably not.
What does this have to do with hosting? Well, believe it or not, the hosting provider you work with has a direct impact on your website’s uptime. Choose the wrong provider – or even the wrong hosting plan with an individual provider – and downtime could become a regular issue you have to deal with.
- Page Loading Speed
Just having your website up and running isn’t enough. You also have to think about how quickly pages are loading and how this impacts the overall user experience of your site. Excessive page loading times lead to higher bounce rates and lower conversions.
When comparing different hosts, ask for some data on average page loading times. This will give you a good idea of the type of performance you can expect. (For the record, the average is right around 2.9 seconds for all websites. Ideally, you want to be below 2 seconds.)
- Cost
From a practical perspective, it’s smart to consider price. Don’t make this the only determining factor in your choice, but do start comparing the cost once you narrow things down to a couple of selections.
The problem with rating hosting providers based on price is that there are so many different factors at play. Are you getting a dedicated server or shared server? How much bandwidth do you have? What kin of support comes with your hosting plan? All of these factors come into play.
- Scalability
Very few websites or blogs stay the same size over time. If yours is that stagnant, then there are greater issues at play. Understanding this, you need to think about scalability when analyzing different web hosting providers.
You need a hosting provider that allows you to easily scale (up or down) as time goes on. This makes it easy to grow without having to worry about the constraints of your server. It’s also the most cost-effective option.
Make a Smart Choice
There’s no right answer regarding which host you should choose. If there was, there would be no need for an article like this. We would just tell you which web hosting provider is best and move along.
So much depends on your individual needs and wants. Are you looking for affordable? Is guaranteed uptime most important? Is security the priority? Depending on how you answer questions like these, the idea of which host is best can change.
With that being said, it’s wise to spend some time listing out your priorities and figuring out what you really want out of your hosting provider.