Choosing the right hosting impacts your site’s cost, speed, security, and reliability. Here's our thoughts on Shared, VPS, dedicated, and managed hosting to pick what suits your business best.
What is Website Hosting?
Think of hosting as the home for your website on the internet. Your website’s files, images, and data need to live somewhere, and hosting companies provide the servers to store and serve that content 24/7.
4 Things to Look for When Choosing Hosting
1. Speed and Performance
A slow website loses visitors fast. Choose hosting with servers located near your main audience, and that use SSD storage (faster than traditional hard drives). Many hosts now offer CDN (Content Delivery Network) integration, which helps your site load quickly worldwide.
2. Uptime and Reliability
If your website is down, customers can’t find or contact you. Look for hosts with uptime guarantees of 99.9% or higher. Check reviews to see if their servers really stay online consistently.
3. Support and Ease of Use
Good customer support can save you headaches later. Make sure your host offers 24/7 support via chat or phone. Also, a user-friendly control panel will make managing your site easier, especially if you’re not tech-savvy.
4. Scalability and Security
Scalability: If you expect your business to grow, pick a host that lets you upgrade your plan easily without downtime or complicated transfers.
Security: Check if the host provides free SSL certificates, regular backups, and security monitoring.
Hosting Types to Consider
- Shared Hosting: The most affordable option where your website shares server resources with other sites. It’s fine for small businesses or new sites with low traffic but can slow down if your site grows.
- VPS Hosting (Virtual Private Server): Offers more control and better performance by giving you dedicated portions of a server. It costs more but is ideal if you want more power and flexibility as your site grows.
- Dedicated Hosting: You get an entire physical server dedicated to your site. It’s expensive and usually only necessary for large businesses or high-traffic websites that need maximum performance and security.
- Managed Hosting Platforms (Like Webflow): These take care of hosting, security, backups, and performance optimizations for you, so you can focus on building your site. They usually come with built-in content delivery networks (CDNs) and SSL certificates, delivering fast and secure sites without the hassle of managing servers.
Final Thoughts
Your website hosting isn’t just a technical detail, it impacts how your visitors experience your business. Don’t always just go for the cheapest option. Its important to work out your cost, performance, and support, so your website runs smoothly and helps grow your business.
If you want help picking or setting up the right hosting, you can get in touch and we’ll walk you through it today.