What are Your Options for Web Hosting?
Choosing the right web hosting provider is key to ensuring a good user experience, as your web host is responsible for ensuring your site is online and running smoothly. The host supports traffic and stores all the code, images, and content that makes up your website. Your host provides your domain, server, and storage space. There are additional services web hosts can provide, but these are the three main functions a web host performs. Web hosting providers also defend against hackers and keep your site from crashing.
Your website can be hosted one of four ways. What’s the difference?
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting means that other websites are being hosted on the same server. RAM, disk space, and processors are shared resources. This option is the cheapest and is great for smaller websites that don’t get a high amount of traffic. Higher traffic sites work better on a virtual private server due to bandwidth and disk space needs. Shared servers cannot provide the resources to support the needs of large sites that experience a high volume of users.
Cloud Hosting (Virtual Private Server)
With virtual private servers, your site is given a specific and higher amount processing power, RAM, and disk space on a shared cloud-based server. Other websites do not have access to these resources. Due to this, a VPS is more expensive. If you have a lower traffic site, these resources will not be fully utilized, making shared hosting the better option.
Dedicated Server
In this web hosting option, your site is the only one hosted on the server. All of the processing power of that server is yours alone.
WordPress Server
This server option is designed for WordPress websites and is great for bloggers. A WordPress server uses one of the options above but is optimized for WordPress.
Not sure whether your site is considered high traffic? A high traffic site receives hundreds of thousands of visitors per day or more, so for most sites, shared hosting is more than adequate. You can check the amount of traffic your site receives using Google Search Console.
Another resource web hosting provides is an SSL certificate, while this is often listed as an optional service, it is one your site absolutely needs for security purposes. An SSL certificate encrypts your site and shows a small lock icon on the web address bar. It is essential to prevent hackers from stealing you or your customer’s data. SSL encryption also motivates Google to rank your site higher in search results.
Questions to Ask Before Choosing a Web Hosting Provider
How Much Disk Space Do I Need?
How Many Email Addresses With My Site Name Do I Need?
How Much Bandwidth Do I Need?
How Much Technical Support Do I Need?
How Frequently Do I Need to Backup My Site?
How Much Storage Do I Need?
Do I Need eCommerce Support?
How Much Am I Willing to Spend?
What Additional Services, If Any, Does My Site Require?
Depending on your answers to these questions, certain web hosting providers will be a better fit. Using your answers to the questions above, select the best option for your needs. We recommend using one of the following web hosting providers for your business.
