How to choose a web host so you don’t regret it later? Choosing the right web hosting is the first indicator of whether you have a successful blog or not. Yes, for me this is the first stuff you need to make the right decision. Imagine that if you choose a trouble web hosting. You cannot focus on your blogging. Every time, you need to fix the web hosting problem.

This all will waste your time!

If this happens, do you feel confident you have a successful blog?

Absolutely not!

In this article, I want to share with you five things that you need to consider when choosing a web host.

What is Web Hosting?

Before we go to the main topic, here I want to explain what is web hosting because not all of you really know what is that.

Definition of web hosting from Namecheap is a server that provides some space to store files of a website. Web hosting makes the files that comprise a website likes code, images, etc available for viewing online. Every website you’ve ever visited is hosted on a server.

In simple words, web hosting is a place where to store all of your website’s files (code, image, etc) and they can view in website form.

Some countries called it server and some countries called it web hosting. It is the same thing.

There are many types of web hosting like Shared hosting, Cloud hosting, VPS hosting, and Dedicated hosting. But, the popular one for beginners is Shared hosting because it is cheaper than other hosting type.

How To Choose A Web Host?

For beginners, choosing web hosting is painful to decide because you need to make the right decision. If not, you will be facing assorted problems and maybe you will give up with your website or blog.

Here are five things you need to consider when choosing web hosting.

#1 – Support

The first thing you must look at when choosing web hosting is their support. Support for hosting must be excellent because when you have your own hosting, unofficially many technical things you need to do.

So, you should choose excellent support in web hosting to make you happy every day without the headache and can focus on your business or content. Let them solve the problem for you.

What means the best support?

For me, when we say the best support, we must consider all of these.

1. Can provide support 24/7. Even the midnight, they can reply in a couple of minutes when you have a problem.
2. Friendly staff and use nice word when communicate.
3. All problem they can solve without give any reasons.

Based on my experience, there are many best web hosts in their support. You can look at my list of web hosting.

#2 – Uptime Guarantee

Uptime of web hosting is the most important thing to have a successful web or blog. If your website is always down, no one will visit your web, and the website ranking on search engines will drop.

What is an uptime guarantee?

An uptime guarantee is a promise that your website will be up and accessible online for a certain percentage of the time. In fact, if what they are promised is misleading, you are entitled to a refund from them. Many web hosts guarantee their server that 99%, 99.9%, 99.99%, or even 100% uptime.

is it true?

Based on my experience, an uptime guarantee is not a big problem for most web host providers. Sometimes it goes down, it is a normal thing. Facebook and Youtube sometimes their website are down too.

On average, make sure in monthly your website is not down over 5 minutes totally.

If not, please change your web hosting provider.

For downtime checking, I always use UptimeRobot to check it.

Why is your website down?

Here are lists of why your website is down.

1. Security threat (virus, malware, ransomware) – 53%
2. Hardware failure – 20%
3. Backup disk corruption – 11%
4. Natural disaster – 10%
5. Human error – 4%
6. Power outage – 2%

If you look, the security threat is a big issue why websites are always down. So, we need to improve our Security of a website.

In conclusion, your web should be online 24 hours every day without any downtime. If your website is often downtime, you potentially lose your traffic and sales. So, make sure you know about it.

#3 – Server Environment

What is server environment?

Server environment here means what they offer for you in their hosting likes

1. Loading speed
2. Server Location
3. Monthly Traffic
4. Content Management System (CMS)
5. Available Storage

The loading speed of a website is the most important thing because it is also can give an impact on your SEO. Nowadays, Google will always prioritize the pages that load faster on their first page because they want to give the best experience for its users.

The speed of a website is also based on server location. That is why please consider when you choose web hosting, please know where your server location. If it is available in your country, please choose it. Otherwise, choose the server that is nearby in your country.

Then, you also need to know how much traffic monthly can bear on your hosting. If not, your server will always be down. This is a nightmare for bloggers or website owners.

Next, please consider choosing web hosting that uses cPanel to manage the server. There are many types of control panels to manage your server but cPanel is easier and friendly to use mainly for beginners.

Finally, you need to know how much storage can store your website’s file on the server. If you just use a static website like a web company, it is not much storage you will use. But, if you create a membership site or blogging, maybe storage will increase time by time because you are always to update it and upload files to the server.

In conclusion, you must know whether the server has a suitable environment for your future website or not. Wish to not cause any trouble in the future, make sure you choose a web hosting that uses cPanel for the web control panel.

#4 – Pricing

Pricing is not much I can explain for you because managing a hosting or server is highly cost. The pricing is based on types of hosting like Shared hosting, VPS hosting, Cloud hosting, and Dedicated hosting.

The cheapest one is Shared hosting where you can get it about $2.99-$9.99 monthly. Very affordable for beginners. But, you must know where Shared hosting has very limited features.

Make sure the price is not too expensive and not too cheaper. Usually, expensive web hosting offers great support. Class “A” support. But, the support you no need it every time. If they are good hosting, maybe you have a problem once per month. If you have enough budget, please go on. If insufficient budget, please search for another web hosting.

For cheaper web hosting that has great features, usually, they provide low-class support. It means, maybe your ticket will be replied in one day. This will make your trouble if you have an urgent problem.

So the best is, please find web hosting at a moderate price.

Please do not use the free web hosting offer because they will trap you in a nightmare.

#5 – Features

Every web hosting, they have different features. So, you cannot get the completed web hosting that you need. They have pros and cons respectively.

Here I just list the seven features of a web host as your reference that maybe you need to consider when choosing your web hosting.

1. Use cPanel to manage server
2. Offer free SSL (Let’s encrypt)
3. Free anti-malware
4. Offer daily and weekly backups
5. Free cloud CDN
6. SPAM protection
7. Application Firewall for DDoS attack

All of these you need to consider and these features are basic on Shared hosting. So, make sure all of this have on your server.

Opinion

In my opinion, the best web hosting you must choose is FastComet because it has all the characteristics from I have mentioned above. The best thing about FastComet is their support and free SSL for all their plan.

Type Of Hosting

As I mentioned above, pricing for hosting is based on the type of Hosting. So, here I will explain briefly what is it.

Basically, there are three types of web hosting.

#1. Shared Hosting – Shared hosting is a hosting where the web hosting provider will divide on one server how much the user will share with the same CPU or resource of the server. It is the most basic type of web hosting.

#2. VPS Hosting – VPS is an upgrade from Shared Hosting where VPS, where is only two or three owners, will share on one server. So, it has more resources and faster loading website than Shared hosting.

#3. Dedicated Hosting – Dedicated hosting is a hosting where one server is only used for one owner. They do not share the hosting with another person. So, it is more secure and fastest in loading.

For more explanation, maybe you can refer to the picture below.

Conclusion

In this article, you have learned how to choose a web host for your successful blog. Choosing web hosting is a critical part to start your successful blog because if you make a wrong decision, all of your efforts will be useless.