If you want to learn the tips and tricks to get a good hosting with an affordable price, then you must pay close attention to this post. I’m going to share with you how you can evaluate and pick the hosting that best suits your needs. Do not worry if you have zero knowledge about hosting service because I’m going to write everything in the simplest way and not too technical for you to understand. Yes! Let’s start this Web Hosting Dummy Guide right away!
Choosing a good hosting is somehow very similar to the way how you choose a laptop. You do not need to learn every component inside a laptop to pick a good one; likewise, you do not need to have deep knowledge to pick a good hosting. However, you need to know what makes a hosting stands out from the others.
What is Web Hosting?
As a photographer, you may wonder what is web hosting, and why is it important?
In layman’s term, web hosting is space you rent in a computer server for storing and displaying your website on the internet.
It is a core requirement for building your photography website in WordPress.
There are several different types of hosting options such as: shared, VPS, dedicated and managed WordPress hosting.
We will explain all these options for you below, so you can make an educated decision. We will also share our recommendations of the best web hosting companies for photographers.
- Shared Hosting
Shared hosting is a popular choice for photographers because it is affordable and easy to setup for beginners.
As the name suggests, you are getting shared space on a large server to host your website. This allows hosting providers to improve their profit margins thus offering you the service for an affordable price.
It’s a standard practice in the hosting industry to advertise “unlimited” resources, but please know that there are usage restrictions in place. Most small businesses will never exceed them, but if you do, then you will be asked to upgrade your plan.
If you are just staring out, then you only need shared hosting. There’s no need to overpay for resources you don’t need.
- VPS & Dedicated Web Hosting
VPS stands for a Virtual Private Server. This is the next step above shared hosting.
While you’re still sharing server space, it’s with a lot less people, so you have more resources and more control over the server settings.
On the other hand, Dedicated hosting is basically a whole server just for your website. These can get fairly expensive based on the size of your website. Since you’re reading this article, then chances are you probably don’t need either of these options.
- Managed WordPress Hosting
Since WordPress is a fast growing platform powering over 25% of all websites on the internet, it has given birth to a new industry, Managed WordPress hosting.
Think of managed hosting as a valet service. 100% hassle free because they will take care of everything from the performance of your website to security to backups and more.
As you can expect, one of the best perks of managed hosting is top-notch support from the most experienced WordPress developers and engineers.
On average, it costs 10x more than a simple shared hosting plan, but the benefit far outweighs the cost.
Managed WordPress hosting is a good option for all websites (no matter the size) specially when the owner has no technical knowledge or the time to handle web hosting issues.
The best way to think of it is, you do what you do best (run your business) and let the hosting experts do the rest.
Hopefully by now you understand the differences between each type of web hosting option that’s available for you.
Demerits of Choosing an Unknown Web Host
- May Lose Your Website: The main thing you all should have in mind that your website is dependent on the web host and if you’re hosting with any non-trusted web hosting company, you may lose your data and even complete website. So, for every blogger it is recommended to keep the complete backup of your website.
- Bad Page Loading Speed: The small or unknown web hosts won’t keep their won servers, instead they may be resellers and that may lead to slow down the page loading speed. And as the page loading is nowadays a main ranking factor of various search engines like Google so you should take care of it.
- Worst Support: If you’re running a blog or website, it may happen many times that you need urgent support from your website but in case of a non-trusted or unknown web host, you may feel the bad technical support.
And there may be several limitation of hosting your website with a bad web host. So, how can you find out that which web host in good and provides better support and have its own servers? Guys the following tips are all about selecting a better web hosting company.
Essential Factors to Consider When Choosing a Web Host
Pricing
Most people tend to consider the price when choosing a web host but in reality, while it's indeed important, it shouldn't be the main deciding factor. This in no way implies that you should come aboard with the cheapest web hosting that you can find. You need to consider a web-hosting company that can give you the best cost-to-benefit ratio. Things like state-of-the-art equipment, top-notch server specifications and exclusive hosting features cost money. So it's unlikely that the cheapest web host is able to offer these options. Just remember the old axiom, "you get what you pay for."
Hosting Specialization
Not all web hosting companies are able to cater to the many different needs of customers. There are companies that would be just right for a personal blog, while there are those that provide hosting solutions for large businesses. So before you sign-up, make sure that you are dealing with a company that best understands your needs as the customer. This will require a little bit of research on your part.Reliability / Uptime
For a website that generates a lot of traffic, it needs to be up almost at all times. Lengthy downtimes will cost you a LOT, and you can't afford that. Just don't be pulled in by companies that claim 100% uptime because they're not true. It's a good thing that there are free uptime monitoring tools that you can find online.
Tech Specifications
If you are launching a small family blog or perhaps a pet fan page, then the most basic hosting plan should suffice. However if you are planning to add a considerable amount of content, then you need to find a hosting plan with enough tech specs to serve your needs. Some of these specs include RAM, disk space, processing power and more. Otherwise, you will find yourself in a lot of headaches due to slow load issues or downtime. And speaking of headaches..
Customer and Technical Support
If a company puts their customer first, then it can always be taken as a good indication. It can't be helped that there are technical aspects to web hosting, so expect to run into some difficulties. So at some point, you will have to contact the company's customer and technical support. Can you call them and be attended by a live person? Are they knowledgeable enough to fix your problems? Do they have a support staff on-call 24/7? Find out about the company's reputation with regards to customer support. Or you can go ahead and call and ask them technical questions regarding your concerns.
Features
Now this is another factor that you should heavily weight when choosing a web hosting service. Basically this is the factor that gives a web hosting company that edge over the competition. Consider these features in accordance with your needs. Do they offer unlimited disk space? Unlimited bandwidth? Do their hosting plans include a site builder? Do they offer money-back guarantees? These are just some of the features that you need to take into consideration.
Hardware
For this factor, you will have to do a bit of research. Companies that take pride of their hardware will surely turn that fact as a main selling point. For the ones that use sub-par hardware, not so much. The quality of the hardware can significantly affect the company's server performance as well your website's.
Payment Plans
It's not uncommon for web hosting companies to entice customers with huge savings if they sign-up for longer termed plans. You should be aware of this sort of marketing strategy. If that web host turned out to be terrible, you will be stuck with them and your only way out is to pay for early termination fees. A good approach is to pay for their monthly rates. This way you can evaluate the provider and see how you like it. If you end up liking their service, you can sign-up with higher payment plans.
Room for Growth
If your website is doing well, at some point your website will grow, and so does your hosting needs. While your current web host fits in with your requirements, this might change once your website grows. Transferring to another web host will take considerable time and effort. So consider a company that has the capacity to handle the growth of your site. See to it that they offer hosting upgrade options such as VPS hosting or dedicated hosting.
Control Panel / User Interface
A control panel is the interface that will enable you to manage different aspects of your web hosting account. Even if you are not the most computer-savvy person out there, you will still have to perform some fairly technical tasks yourself such as email and FTP account setup, installing WordPress. With an easy-to-use control panel, you can easily perform these tasks. The last thing that you would want is to call the support staff for the most basic tasks. Some of the most common control panels are cPanel, Plesk or vDeck.
Backups Policy
Data loss is something that you don't want to happen to your website. The consequences of data loss will surely render you unable to recover. So choose a web hosting company that puts a good deal of significance to their data backup policy. How often do they perform data backups? What are the methods that they'll be using? Some companies will charge you extra for day-to-day or regular backups while there are those that will provide you the necessary tools so you can do the backup procedures yourself.
User Reviews
One of the most reliable sources of information when it comes to the overall performance of a web hosting company are the customer reviews. Find out what other customers say about a particular web host. And try to steer clear of reviews that are found within the company's website as they are likely to be paid or fake reviews. For this matter, it is best to stick with external sources for web host reviews. Sources like Web Hosting Jury and Web Hosting Talk are examples of reliable sources for web hosting reviews.
That’s it! That’s everything I want to share with you today on the things to look for when you choose a web hosting. I do not want to overwhelm you with too much information, so I’ve left aside many details. If you want to learn more about web hosting, perhaps you can leave a comment below and I will try my best to answer you. Good luck and see you again!
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