If you have the intent of starting a new blog or any other website, then it should occur to you that hosting services are considered to be the backbone of that blog or website. Although the primary step to starting a website will begin by choosing a good domain, always remember that choosing a good hosting service should be of paramount importance to your concern. We have compiled a beginner’s guide to choosing the perfect hosting service so that you don’t have to waste unnecessary amounts of time looking for one. Let us begin.
1: What is your maximum budget?
Majority of people want to have a smaller budget when choosing a hosting service (because it is only natural that you want to save as much money as possible right?). To help you in this category, it will be more resourceful if you chose a hosting service that accepts monthly or quarterly payments. If you cannot continue running a website or a blog for a 12 months due to unforeseen circumstances, then it will be pointless to pay for 12 whole months of hosting. Save and allocate your money wisely.
2: When companies give out FREE things, keep your eyes wide?
Remember the popular adage: ‘good things are life are free’. Well, they will obviously come at a price. When you are strolling the internet, you will come across several companies who are advertising free products and / or services. Some of the common ones have been given below:
- FREE WordPress themes
- FREE WordPress plugins
- FREE Facebook ad coupons
- FREE Google ad coupons
The above mentioned services are only a few. The message that we want to send to you is that it’s imperative that you conduct a thorough amount of research before your eyes start sparkling over the ‘FREE’ banner sign.
3: Ease of installation
If you see bloggers and website owners paying a little too much for hosting services, you should see that they are also paying for the comfort. When we say comfort, we mean the installation of different scripts. For example, HostGator possesses Fantastico which ends up making installation of WordPress a breeze. Be on the lookout for hosting services that provide flexibility and comfort, and if they charge a too much, (far away from your wallet’s comfort zone) then overlook your budget once more.
4: Disk space and bandwidth
We feel that we don’t need to explain the above terms but since a guide is all about reiterating the basics, we shall do it anyway. Disk space is the amount of space that will be allocated to your blog or website (in the form of images, GIFs, documents, and videos) and bandwidth is the amount of visitors that your hosting service can handle at one point. Now, we don’t need to remind you to pick a high bandwidth hosting service so that neither you nor your visitors experience any form of discomfort in the future when there are just too many visitors for the hosting service to load the website at a quicker pace.
5: Customer support
No matter how good the product is; if it is accompanied by pathetic customer support service, then it is better to discard that hosting service right away. In the foreseeable future, you will be facing a myriad of issues such as:
- Website is not working
- You installed an incorrect plugin
- Deleted your entire database by accident
- Website running extremely slow
Before proceeding with haste to acquire the hosting service, make sure that your service is also providing you with a 24 hour customer support because you never know, anything can happen.
6: Money back guarantee
If any point of using the hosting service, you feel that you are dissatisfied with the performance that is being fed to you, you can always avail the ‘money back guarantee’ and get reimbursed with the money that you had invested before.
7: Up time of the hosting service
If you want your website (or blog) to become popular with an influx of visitors in the foreseeable future, then select a company whose hosting service will be able to provide you with more than 99% of up time. Right now, visitors are the only thing pumping your blog with the sustenance it needs to thrive and if visitors see that your website is down majority of the times, then they won’t even bother to visit it the second time.
8: Can your data be migrated?
If you feel that at any point, you are dissatisfied with your hosting service in the future, then make sure that you have chosen a service that allows you to shift all of your data to another server. Be warned, hosting services that offer the flexible facility of migrating your data will obviously charge more than regular services. Look at the cost of migrating your data to another server and then make the decision prudently.
9: Is the hosting service compatible with a variety of scripts
Your hosting service should be compatible with all of the script installations. This will include scripts like:
- WordPress
- Joomla,
- bbPress,
- php,
- Image gallery,
- Flash website and several others
If your hosting service provider is compatible with these scripts and many more, then nothing is stopping you (except if you have enough budget) from acquiring the service.
10: Research the company thoroughly before choosing their hosting service
Here are a few queries that you should be asking for when looking for a hosting service
- The company’s background
- Where the majority of the company’s servers are located
- How many websites has the hosting service hosted so far
- Customer satisfaction rating
- Google searches of the company and its hosting service
We hope that we have compiled sufficient amount of information for you to go out, start researching and pick out the hosting service that is congruent to your requirements. If you still feel that there are still some questions that you require the answer to or if you feel that we left out something, then you can always leave us with your feedback and with your wisdom in the comment banks and enlighten us all. Happy hosting service hunting!
