Contents:

• Introduction
• What things should I consider when choosing a website host?
• Know the difference between domain and hosting
• Choose the right type of hosting
• Know your site’s performance requirements
• How important is uptime?
• What about customer support?
• What about website security?
• Is it WordPress friendly?
• Understand what you need from a website host before signing up, to make sure it’s the best one for your needs
• What we use and recommend
• Conclusion

Introduction

Choosing the right website hosting provider can be a challenge sometimes. There are many options out there, and every site has its unique needs depending on the nature of the content being hosted. After all, you wouldn’t use a $50 drone to take professional real estate photos, would you?

The same is true for website hosting. If your site’s going to be super popular and get tons of traffic, you’ll need an expensive hosting service that can handle it (e.g., dedicated server). But if your site’s just starting out or only gets a few hundred visitors per day, then shared hosting will probably do just fine.

In this article we’ll take a look at how to choose the best website host for your needs, as well as some tips for keeping things running smoothly once you’ve found one!

What things should I consider when choosing a website host?

There are a lot of things to consider when you’re choosing a web host.

• Reliability, uptime and speed: This is the most important aspect of your hosting service. A professional-grade web host should have 99%+ uptime and be able to handle large amounts of traffic without slowing down or crashing. If you’re planning on using your website for e-commerce, then this becomes even more critical as downtime can result in lost sales.
• Customer service and support: You’ll want to find out what kind of customer support is available from each provider before signing up with them. Find out how quickly they respond to requests for help or issues related to their services; how long it takes them to reply via email or live chat; if there’s a phone number available where you can call them directly (not just an automated voice mailbox). Also check if there’s any way for customers like yourself (and not just people within their company) who have used their service successfully in the past to share their experiences so others can learn from them too! And finally, ask yourself whether these guys seem like they know what they’re doing!

Know the difference between domain and hosting.

• The first thing to understand is that domain and hosting are not the same things. A domain name is simply the name of your website, like apple.com or google.com. It’s what people see when they type in your site’s URL (e.g., https://www.thehouragency.com).
• Hosting refers to where your website is stored online and how it works after it’s published online—it includes things like the files that make up your website, as well as any databases and back-end systems that run behind it all (e.g., WordPress).
• Hosting usually comes from a third party separate from registrars like GoDaddy; you need both domains and hosting if you want to build an entire site on the Internet!

Choose the right type of hosting.

There are three primary types of hosting: shared hosting, VPS and dedicated servers.

• Shared Hosting is the most common type of hosting plan, and also the cheapest option. Just like the name suggests, it’s shared between multiple users on the same server. This means that you’ll share resources with other websites hosted on that same server, such as RAM and processor power. That can be both a good thing (you can use the unused RAM from other sites) or a bad thing (if all these websites are getting traffic at once, your site will slow down).
• VPS (Virtual Private Server) is more expensive than shared hosting but offers more reliability because it gives you access to dedicated resources that aren’t used by anyone else. You’ll also have full control over your server settings so you’ll know exactly what’s going on inside it and be able to tweak things as needed without having to ask someone else for help every time something goes wrong with your website.
• Dedicated servers are typically used by large organizations or agencies with very high traffic requirements because they offer full control over what goes on inside them; however they’re also extremely expensive compared to shared or VPS options so they’re not recommended unless absolutely necessary

Know your site’s performance requirements.

• Performance is the speed and quality of your site, as measured by a third party.
• The best way to measure performance is with a free tool like PageSpeed Insights or GTMetrix. These tools will also show you how quickly a website loads from each geographical area.
• To measure performance requirements, take into account:

o How much traffic will your site receive in one day? Is it during peak hours (like lunchtime) or off-peak hours?

o How many content pages are there on average per month? Does the page load slowly because of large images?

o How many other websites are currently being hosted on the same server as yours? If so, how much RAM should you buy so that they don’t interfere with your loading time and stability

How important is uptime?

It is important to consider the amount of uptime you want more than anything else. If your website goes down, you are losing money and potential customers. You may not be able to recover from such a loss if it happens too often or for too long. It’s best to choose a web hosting company that has at least 99% uptime, so they can make sure your website is always available when someone needs it most.

What about customer support?

If you’re just getting started, make sure to choose a host that’s backed by excellent customer service. It’s an important aspect of web hosting, and it’s something you should consider when choosing your provider. When you’re a newbie to the hosting world, it’s difficult to know whether or not a company has a good support team. It may seem like the best way to find out is by reading reviews left by those who have used their services before—but if we’ve learned anything from our experience with this guide so far, it’s that people are more likely than not to leave positive reviews even when they’re unhappy with their product or service. So how can you be sure?

Here’s what we recommend:

• Look at how quickly each company responds when there’s a problem on their end (e.g., when someone else uses up all the bandwidth). How long does it take them to fix these issues? How often do they fall into this category? Are you able to call them, chat with them or only email them?
• Check out review sites like TrustPilot and SiteJabber for user feedback on specific brands’ customer service experiences. You can also search Google for reviews about individual companies in your industry; just make sure that the person whose opinion you’re basing yours on actually purchased something from them first!

What about website security?

Website security is a hot topic, and for good reason. Imagine getting a call from your boss at 2 am because your website has been hacked and it’s spewing spam all over the internet. Now imagine that call being in front of an audience of millions. You probably don’t want to deal with either scenario, but they are both very real possibilities—and they’re only two examples of why you should be concerned about website security.

Luckily, there are many things you can do to keep yourself safe while maintaining your sanity. In this section we’ll talk about those things and more: what exactly website security is (and isn’t), how to protect yourself from hackers, checking for security issues on your own site, keeping up with best practices so as not to get hacked in the first place, etcetera.

Is it WordPress-friendly?

• WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world.
• WordPress is the most secure CMS.
• WordPress is the most flexible, powerful and cost-effective solution for your website.
• WordPress powers more than 43.3% of all websites on the Internet while writing this, including financial institutions like Bank of America and even Apple itself uses it as a content management system for its online store.

Understand what you need from a website host before signing up, to make sure it’s the best one for your needs.

To make the most of your website, you need to know:

• What kind of performance and uptime requirements your site needs.
• If customer support will be helpful in case something goes wrong (and how much support).
• What security measures are in place to protect against hackers or other threats to your data.
• Whether it’s WordPress-friendly for self-hosting and easy to set up.
• The difference between domain registration and hosting – domain registration is simply the name given to an address on the internet (e.g., [yourwebsite].com), while hosting refers specifically to where this address is stored online through a server connected directly or indirectly via an internet connection.

What we use and recommend

We use and recommend Siteground for our clients, which is a great option for most people. It’s not the cheapest out there, but also not the most expensive. In terms of features and user experience, Siteground has been one of our favorite hosts for years now.

Siteground is a good choice for beginners, because they make it easy to set up your website and get started with WordPress. And it works just as well for Pro’s, that need a lot of power.

It’s affordable, reliable, and has all the features you need to run your site successfully and all the named requirements in this post:

• Reliability, speed and an uptime guarantee at 99.99%
• One of the best customer service and support we have come across. Fast answers if you chat with them and the option to call their support and talk to an actual human.
• Hosting and domain at the same place
• Shared hosting, VPS and dedicated servers
• They provide great performance and optimization
• Excellent security for your website and free SSL certification (and email addresses) – some other providers charge extra for that.

The company has been around for a long time (since 2004) and has an incredible reputation for being easy to work with and providing top-notch customer service, which is well deserved.

Get Siteground Now!

Conclusion

A web host can make or break your website. It’s important to understand what you need from a website host before signing up, to make sure it’s the best one for your needs. The wrong hosting provider could lead to expensive downtime and security breaches, so take your time in choosing a host that will offer you everything you need for the growth of your site.