The 5 Most Important Factors to Consider in a Hosting Plan

Starting your own business can be a very fulfilling yet difficult process. When starting from scratch, entrepreneurs can struggle to establish a network or obtain funding for their new business venture. Additionally, establishing pricing and identifying a target market can be tedious and frustrating. And even if your business has been around for a while, there can still be issues. Your business may have plateaued and you may be looking for a way to revamp your business’s growth.
- Price
- Speed
- Storage space
- Downtime
- Security
1. Price
Thanks to the large number of hosting options currently available, pricing is very competitive and it should be no problem to find an affordable hosting provider. Additionally, nearly every hosting plan provides deals where you can subscribe for a multi-year subscription at a discounted price. My top three recommended hosting providers based on price would be Hostinger, InMotion, and iPage.
2. Speed
Loading speed is one of the most important qualities of a professional website. Given that many customers will leave a website if it takes more than even a few seconds to finish loading, it is essential that your website loads quickly. Your choice of hosting provider will play a huge role in the loading speed of your website. There are a lot of factors that can affect your site’s speed, with many of them being out of your control. However, three of the most important factors that can be controlled are (1) the location of your hosting server, (2) the type of drive your website’s data is stored on, and (3) the bandwidth of your hosting server.
The location of your hosting server is important simply because the closer your server is to your customers, the faster your site will load. This means that if most of your customers are located in southwest Florida, you will want your server to be located as close to southwest Florida as possible.
Second, the type of drive used to store your website’s data also plays a major role in site speed. More and more hosting providers have begun using solid state drives (SSDs), as they are able to process data much faster than the older, less efficient hard disk drives (HDDs). If you are looking to increase your site’s speed, make sure that your hosting provider uses SSDs in its servers.
My second recommendation is Cloudways. With servers located in five continents, Cloudways is guaranteed to have a server location near your business. All of its servers utilize solid state drives. And the bandwidth for their cheapest plan offers one terabyte of bandwidth, meaning it can easily handle hundreds of thousands of website visitors.
3. Storage space
4. Downtime
5. Security
The last factor we’ll discuss is website security. Every day, hackers discover more ways to compromise websites. Perhaps the most devastating form of attack is the distributed denial-of-service attack (DDOS). DDOS attacks flood your website with a multitude of requests, overwhelming the server and causing it (and your website along with it) to shut down. Thankfully, there are ways to combat this attack. Various hosting providers use a program called cPHulk, which can identify the computers causing the attack and block their data from reaching your server, thus permanently preventing those computers from attacking your site ever again.
Conclusion
In this article we discussed five important factors to research when buying a hosting plan: price, speed, storage space, downtime, and security. These five features are foundational to any hosting plan. Additionally, we provided a list of the top three hosting companies for each feature. Hopefully this article left you with a better understanding of hosting and will help you choose the best hosting provider for your website. If you are still having trouble making up your mind, you can read our second article on hosting which discusses five extra features to look for in a hosting plan.
Hosting is a vital component of any website, and it is essential to choose the best provider for your website. If you are feeling overwhelmed by the idea of choosing a hosting company on your own, feel free to send a text to (239) 776-9180 or info@blueprintwebdesign.com. I’d love to answer any questions you have and help make sure that you find a hosting provider that’s a perfect fit for your website.
