Web hosting is a fundamental part of any website. Choosing the right hosting company and plan for your website requires careful consideration. Not all hosts are created equal, and you need to make sure you get all the features you need.
Fortunately, at DBM, we have extensive experience with web hosting and we know what the most important criteria are. Once you know exactly what you’re looking for, you’ll be perfectly capable of starting your new website on the right foot.
Before you choose web hosting, you better know the definition of web hosting and the different types it includes. I have explained it in detail in the article on Web hosting type.
In this article, we’ll dive into 5 essential criteria you can use to choose the best web hosting service for your website:
1. Identify the core needs of the website and choose a hosting type.
It is important to be clear about the purpose of your website. Different websites have different requirements for web hosting. The core needs of your website can determine roughly what type of hosting you need.
If your website is an e-commerce website, you have to consider all the problems that prevent your customers from placing orders, such as the stability and response speed of the website, and maybe you also need some plugins that can be freely configured or integrated with any payment For the privilege and convenience, at this time, you’d better choose VPS hosting because it provides more administrative privileges.
If your website is your personal blog, then you may want to consider the storage of content and how to publish content more conveniently, you better need a fully managed service, such as shared hosting.
If you have a large company behind you, hosting a lot of websites, or hosting high traffic website. At this point, dedicated hosting may be one of your options.
2. Identify the services you need and choose a hosting provider.
Choosing a web hosting provider that is right for you is not easy. Generally, you can check whether they are trustworthy from the following aspects.
Reliability is related to uptime, ‘Uptime’ refers to the percentage of time that your website is online and available to internet users without any issues. Naturally, you should want your site to be live as much as possible, and your host should guarantee something very close to 100% uptime.
You can experience server performance and reliability by requesting a free trial. But not all providers offer a free trial option.
During the period of your website hosting contract, if you encounter any problems, you can always find someone to help you, which is also a reliable performance.
So, It is necessary to enjoy a 24/7 technical support.
Not every website problem you face is simple. An expert support team with extensive web hosting experience will help you resolve issues faster. It is imperative that you choose a provider with more than ten years of experience in the hosting industry.
3. Confirm the Subscription Period for Hosting Contracts.
Most hosting providers offer very flexible billing cycle contracts. In DBM, you usually choose the two-year billing cycle which is the most cost-effective. Of course, monthly and semi-annual payments are also allowed if you are only using it for a short period of time. If you’re still hesitant, you can also request a 3-day free trial to help you decide.
4. Confirm host's refund policy and guarantee
Once you start building your website, you never know what will happen. That being said, it is wise to thoroughly review your potential web host’s refund policy. If you are unhappy with your host, or have completely changed your mind about your site, it is necessary to have some options.
In addition to making sure you can cancel your plans and get a refund, it is wise to find out what the landlord guarantees and is not liable for. This might include looking at its uptime guarantees (as we discussed earlier) and its service document terms.
5. Choose a plan that woks for you.
When choosing a plan, the most important thing is to choose the right amount of RAM and CPU cores.
The more RAM you have, the more you ensure that your website can run several processes simultaneously. Traffic is attributable to how much RAM your website needs. and some Content Management System or online applications served for your websites will take more RAM.
Regarding your website, the more capacity your CPU has, the more information the CPU can store and process. Ultimately, your website will run faster and smoother when it has the CPU capacity it requires.
A great feature that the CPU offers is that it can run numerous requests simultaneously. Thus, if you have a high-traffic website, it’s best to have a large CPU capacity so that it can run several requests at the same time without making the user experience suffer.
When all the above aspects are clear to you, you can start ordering. When you work on the server, you also need to monitor traffic and application usage on your site in real-time and be ready to adjust the server configuration to meet your business needs.