We need to focus on and consider some important features and functionalities before buying web hosting.
Hosting is the first important investment in your blogging carrier. So it is important to choose it wisely.
The less cost of web hosting doesn’t mean it is cheap and best, in the same way, highly-priced hosting is not right all the time.
So, it is important to consider some important things before buying web hosting. Knowing these things will help you save time in choosing your hosting and save you thousands of dollars before purchasing web hosting.
Important things to consider before buying a Web Hosting
As a beginner, you don’t need to have much technical knowledge to analyze before buying a hosting. But knowing these little things can help you to choose the best hosting based on your needs.
In the recent years many new features and technologies improved in the hosting field. Over thousands of hosting companies have evolved from the past few years.
It makes us think and find which is better and what should I consider before buying web hosting.
Many hosting companies are only showing their best features on the front page and completely hiding their important drawbacks. So follow this blog post, to find what to consider while choosing and buying web hosting.
Shared Hosting
For beginners shared hosting is the best. Shared hosting is more cheap when compared to VPS and dedicated hosting.
If you don’t know what shared hosting is, then let me give you a simple definition.
Shared Hosting is a type of hosting, where multiple websites hosted on a single server.
If your website grows, then you can change it to dedicated hosting. Let’s take a look at the important things to consider when buying a hosting.
List of Things to Consider When buying a hosting
Storage Space
Server storage or Disk space is the first thing to consider when you choose web hosting.
Storage space is the amount of space provided in the server for you to store your website and files.
For a beginner, having a few Gigabytes of storage is enough. But having more storage is better and less risk involved.
Nowadays normally many hosting providers are giving a minimum of 10 GB of storage on their basic plan. The premium hosting like Bluehost, offering 50 GB of SSD storage on their basic plan.
Some websites provide unlimited storage space. But to be practical, anything is not unlimited. Most times hosting companies show unlimited storage, but there are some other terms and conditions that will restrict you from using more storage space.
But for medium-sized websites, it doesn’t affect you. So, choosing web hosting, which provides at least 10 GB of storage space is an important thing to consider when buying.
If you are starting an eCommerce website, then consider buying quality hosting, which gives more disk space and higher RAM.
Free Domain Name
Getting a free domain name is also important. If you are already having a website, then no problem.
But if you are a beginner, a free domain name is also one of the important things to consider when buying web hosting.
With a free Domain name, you are literally saving $12. Most times, we begin with a budget constraint, so free domain helps us to save extra dollars. Then we could also invest it in the other blogging tool.
The Premium hosting like GreenGeeks gives you a free domain name with less hosting cost, which makes it best for beginner bloggers.
These hosting providers help you choose from the famous top-level domain extensions. So, getting a free domain name is the first dollar you earned in blogging.
Initial Price vs Renewal Price
Mostly we, everyone, will look for the current price of hosting to buy it. But most times hosting companies will provide you a 20% to 90% discount for new customers.
But at the time of renewal, you have to pay their standard price. The standard price is the original price, that is without discount.
These discounts are given by the hosting companies to attract their new customer. So, don’t expect discounts when renewal.
So whenever buying a hosting, along with the discount, check their original price too, that helps you avoid the price hike shocks. If you already bought hosting with a discount, but the renewal prices are too high, then changing the web host is the best way to reduce the prices.
But if you are more comfortable with the current hosting service, then spending a few extra dollars doesn’t matter.
Professional hosting companies like Interserver, provide you price lock guarantee. The price lock guarantee means, your first-month signup hosting price followed for your complete lifetime.
If you are the one who doesn’t want more hosting prices during renewals, then it could be best. At $5/month, you will get an unlimited website and unlimited storage hosting at Interserver.
Read – How to save money on Web hosting renewals
Regular Backup
Having your regular site backup keeps you on the safer side. With over 30,000 websites hacked every day, most of them are smaller business sites.
So having your regular backup keeps you extra security for your website. Many premium hosting companies are providing the regular backup option, which keeps your website backups for 30 days. But some hosting companies don’t provide backup.
By choosing the web hosting with regular backup helps you to avoid buying a separate backup plugin like UpdraftPlus.
The backup option is also an important thing to consider before buying web hosting. And also makes sure their backup archives are available for several days. Having a minimum 30 days of backup archive is much better.
Hosting Bandwidth Limit
Bandwidth usually limits the number of visitors visiting your website. Bandwidth is also more important as storage space.
Having more disk space with less bandwidth is also useless. Usually, the bandwidth limit is calculated and restored for every month.
Most hosting companies mention their bandwidth limit below their storage space features. For Example, look at the bandwidth given by WPX hosting.
If your bandwidth limit reached a maximum, then your hosting companies don’t allow any visitors to your website. Then the first choice is to upgrade the plan or wait for the next month to reset your Bandwidth limit.
But if you are waiting for the next month, then losing your potential customer. So check out the bandwidth limit before buying your web hosting.
If you are not more sure about your bandwidth limit, then you can also look out for the number of visitors that hosting plans can handle. For example, look at Hostinger plans.
Usually, all shared hosting plans easily handle upto 10,000 monthly visitors. Some premium shared hosting plans can handle upto 100k monthly visits.
But for more than 50,000 visitors shared hosting not recommended. So you can move your hosting to dedicated hosting, that can handle larger numbers of visitors easily.
Number of domains and subdomains allowed
This lets you find how many websites you can host with a single plan. Sometimes if you want to try multiple websites on different niches, then having multiple site hosting options is better.
Number of allowed domains is the top feature given by most of the hosting companies. Having multiple site hosting facilities helps to save you more cost.
In many hosting companies, with few extra dollars, you will get unlimited website hosting options with unlimited storage.
GreenGeeks hosting is one of the best examples of it. Their second plan comes with unlimited hosting and storage, with just a few extra dollars
At the basic plan, most of the hosting companies allow you to host only one website. But with their next plans, you will get multiple hosting options with the best-discounted prices.
So consider it too, before buying a web hosting.
Premium Security
As I said earlier, over 30,000 websites hacked every day, so it is important to analyze the proper security features.
In recent years, the hosting providers keep on increasing their security features and creating their in-house malware databases.
Choosing the hosting with powerful security features will help you to lower down the risk of malware attacks.
Usually premium hosting companies are coming up with basic security features like DDoS protection, spam protection, malware scanning, two factor authentication and Web hosting firewall.
But some hosting companies lack these basic features. So, choosing Web hosting acceptable level of security features is important.
If you need higher security and don’t need to worry about the hacking issues, then you can go with managed web hosting.
The powerful managed web hosting companies like WPX provide high-end security to your website. If malware is detected in your website, their experts will clean your website for free. So these types of companies offer services one step ahead of others, which makes you completely focus on your business.
One other thing I want to say to beginners is, some hostings have many security features, but sometimes, limited features are available to their basic plan. So whenever before buying web hosting, the lookout your hosting plan covers all important security features.
One best example for this is SiteGround. SiteGround is a famous and well-known hosting provider that comes with good security features. But on their basic plan, it lacks Firewall security, which is a basic thing. They didn’t mention it anywhere before buying it, after buying it, only I came to know that my firewall security option is restricted.
- Read: Best SiteGround Alternatives – Cheap and Best
So, make sure your hosting comes with a handful of powerful security features to keep your website safer.
Uptime and Downtime
Uptime is how much time your hosting server will available for visitors on average. If you have less Uptime, then your visitors will see only blank white pages when they are visiting your site.
So choosing the hosting provider with strong uptime is important. On average, the Uptime above 99.5% is good, but some premium hosting companies are providing 99.9%, which considered great in the industry.
So choose the hosting with higher uptime and less downtime.
24/7 Customer support
Getting instant help is another important thing to consider before buying a web hosting.
As a beginner, sometimes we need regular technical assistance who can guide and support you instantly.
Choose the web hosting that provides 24/7 customer support, with real human assistance.
Some hosting companies also use chat bots for initial responses, which cannot solve all your important needs. So you need to avoid it.
Also, consider the way of contacting customer support. Most of the hosting companies give you instant live chat and ticketed email systems.
More than that, if you need live phone support, then look for it too. Your convenient way should be included, and they should be able to quickly resolve your queries.
Price and hosting plans
With thousands of hosting companies in the market, you can find hosting for every price range.
You can get hosting for less than $1/month or 1000/month, that’s based on your convenience. But setting up the budget is more important.
As a customer, you need to compare some hosting providers, which gives all the above features at a reasonable price. The hosting company also should be reliable.
Comparing the hosting plans gives you an overview of what are the important features you will get for every extra bucks spending.
So comparing the hosting and their plans are important.
Apps Supported
If you are buying a web hosting for WordPress, then probably there is no problem. It’s because most of the hosting providers in the market support WordPress. WordPress is the most used content management system in the world.
If you are using any other CMS like Drupal, Joomla or Magento then make sure the hosting plan supports your application.
For a perfect example – WPX hosting offers only WordPress hosting, which is highly optimized for it. While the hosting companies like Interserver support over 100+ applications. So consider it before buying web hosting.
More than that, if you are a developer, then make sure that the hosting gives you developer tools and a set of programming languages that it supports.
Extra Basic and important features to consider Before Purchasing a web hosting
Having a bonus is always a good thing. So you don’t need to invest extra in it for buying it separately.
- Free SSL certificate – It is not like the olden days, in recent years SSL has become one of the important things for your website.
SSL is normally an extra security layer, which keeps your sensitive data encrypted. In other words, SSL protects your confidential data and gives HTTPS to your website URL. (Learn more about SSL)
Search engines like Google also give the SSL as a positive signal, which improves your website’s trust. So choose the hosting that comes with a free SSL certificate.
- Free CDN – CDN stands for Content delivery network, in which your website data is stored in different locations of the world for faster loading of web pages.
So choose the hosting free CDN on your hosting package.
- SSD storage – SSD storage servers give you better website loading speed. If your hosting company is not mentioned, contact their customer support to ensure before purchasing the web hosting.
SSD highly improves your web page loading speed, so you can reduce your website bounce rate and improve the website user experience.
Read – Quick ways to improve the user experience of the website
- Some Bonus – The other things include free website builder, unlimited email accounts, powerful cache, money-back guarantee, unlimited database, FTP accounts, and Quick wordpress installations.
The hosting providers like Bluehost give you $200 marketing credit, which you can spend on Microsoft advertising and Google Ads.
- Free Migration – If you are changing your host from another, then look out whether free migration is involved. Choosing the hosting provider that gives you free migration is great, so you can just sit back and their experts will do it for you.
If you are not a more technical guy, then migration done by experts is better. Some hosting companies also charge you hundreds of dollars for their experts to migrate your website. So consider buying web hosting that provides free migration.
One final thing I can say to everyone is, take some little time to read the hosting companies terms and conditions. It’s because some hosting companies have really many constrained conditions, which will affect you in the longer run.
Purchase hosting after knowing these features – Wrap up
At last, these are some important things that I would tell any beginner blogger to consider before buying web hosting.
So once you bought it wrong, then probably you are wasting your money and more than that your time too. So choosing to analyze the features before purchasing web hosting is better.
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I hope this article will help you to consider the important thing before buying web hosting. If I have missed anything comment below.
