The selection of web hosting providers on the market is large. If you are looking for a suitable server provider, you should first get an overview of the offer of the individual service providers and then select the provider that best suits your own personal requirements based on various criteria. We have summarized the essential points that should be considered when making the selection:
Server variant
The most important point when deciding on a particular provider is the server variant. Depending on the planned online project, a different server variant is required. While a simple webspace package is sufficient for blogs and private websites, a separate virtual server or even a wholly dedicated root server is often required for more extensive projects. Some have also specialized in the provision of products such as game servers or voice servers. If you want to find the right server provider, you should think about which technical solution is needed in advance. From the Webpage Scientist, you will get the best consultant there.
Quality and support
Other important criteria are the quality of the hardware and network infrastructure as well as the support of the server provider. To ensure problem-free operation of the server without failures, attention should be paid to branded hardware and a properly configured and monitored network infrastructure on the part of the provider continuously. At many companies, you can find relevant information on the website, which you should read carefully. The support offer should also be noted. In the event of a problem, the web hosting provider should be easy and quick to reach. In the best case, not only a ticket system is available, but a 24-hour telephone hotline.
Price
Of course, the price also plays a role when choosing the right service provider. A comparison of several offers can help to find the provider with the best possible price-performance ratio. However, you should not let advertising promises blind yourself, but do your own research. Often you have to accept cuts in quality and support at a lower price.
The choice of the hosting provider is undoubtedly one of the most important as it will affect many factors that will determine the success of your portal. But what should be considered when choosing the best hosting provider? Below you will find a series of tips that can be useful to evaluate the service that best suits your needs.
Free or paid hosting?
The first thing you need to consider in choosing the best hosting is the use you will make of your site. In this way, you can better orient yourself on the choice of a paid or free hosting. If you are starting out and want to start a blog just for a pastime or because you want to begin to understand the enormous potential of this “world”, unquestionably free hosting is the best choice for you. In this case, in fact, you will not need a lot of space or a top-level domain. Obviously a free hosting service it will also have constraints, one of which is the presence of the name of the supplier within the domain and the obligation to insert an advertising banner of the provider. With a paid hosting service, however, you can customize the domain of your site, you will not have to host any mandatory banner and freely choose how much space to reserve for your portal.
Price
A question you must ask yourself before choosing a hosting is: how much do I want to spend and invest in my site? It will be the answer to guide you in your choice, as hosting providers offer solutions for all budgets, and therefore it all depends on your budget. Hosting is usually paid annually, and the price varies substantially based on the available disk space, monthly user traffic calculated in megabytes, and other personalized services such as dedicated email accounts. To start, you can buy a basic hosting plan for a few euros a year and at any time ask for an upgrade or a move to a higher system when you realize that your site is growing.
Shared or dedicated hosting?
Indeed you will also have to decide whether to entrust your site to shared or dedicated hosting, what does it mean? In a nutshell with shared hosting the space is divided between multiple users; for this reason, in some cases, slowdowns can occur especially when the number of monthly unique visitors exceeds the limit. With dedicated hosting, however, you have a server reserved only for you, and you will not have problems of this type as the monthly traffic supported is unlimited. Of course, this option has a higher price and is especially recommended for sites that generate more than 100 thousand unique visitors per month. There is also a middle ground, or semi-dedicated hosting, especially suitable for medium-sized portals that cause approximately 40 thousand to 100 thousand unique monthly accesses.
Assistance
One aspect that you must never underestimate is the assistance and support service made available to the customer. Serious hosting offers an active service 24 hours a day and is always ready to answer any doubt, request, or question from the customer. Please note that if you choose a foreign hosting, the assistance service will not be in Italian. For this reason, if you are not very familiar with the English language, it is better to choose an Italian supplier such as WebHosting.it that offers you technical support in Italian, active every day, 24 hours a day. Before making a choice, test firsthand assistance to evaluate not only the skills of the technicians but also the speed of response times as, in the event of a mistake, even a few minutes of delay could adversely affect the performance of your site and make you lose valuable visits.
Ability to transfer the domain
When you read the proposals of the different hosting providers, also be informed on how to transfer the domain, or on the possibility of migrating your site to another server. Remember that it is your right to be able to change hosting at any time and therefore read all the contractual clauses. Also, make sure that this procedure is simple enough and that there is a support service available to support you at every step of the step.
Backup service
Regardless of what your business is on the web, the data you upload to your site is probably the most precious thing you own, and therefore you must safeguard it at all costs. Precisely for this reason, when you choose to host, be informed if the service also includes the backup function that allows you to save in a few simple steps everything you have uploaded to your “virtual space”. Some providers offer the automatic daily backup function included in the price, for others instead you will have to request it at the time of purchase. With this little trick, you can work more quietly, knowing that the backup and restore function is always active, and therefore, your data will never be lost in case of failure.
Reputation
The Internet is a mine of information, and for this reason, you can also use it to find the most suitable hosting for you. The advice is to spend some time searching the opinions of users on one or more hosting services online, before making any choice. It is not difficult to read the experiences positive and negative of those who have registered a site in the forums. Obviously, don’t stop at the first comment but interact with other users to gather as much information as possible. Remember that a negative review does not mean that the hosting service is terrible, so before drawing this conclusion, personally contact the supplier asking for clarification.
To conclude, we can say that the search for good hosting is undoubtedly not easy, but considering these factors, it is possible to clarify the ideas a little. Remember that in any case, you can still change the provider if you notice that it no longer reflects your needs.