It can be a complicated process finding the best web hosting company for your business. Even more, it can be quite confusing when you have to choose between various hosting plans and services each hosting company offers.
You can find some of the top hosting companies from GoDaddy, Bluehost, Hostgator, Dreamhost, Namecheap and a whole lot of others. So, how do you decide which one is the perfect fit for your business? What parameters can help you choose the hosting that will give you optimum satisfaction year in year out?
Let's take a look at what you must take into consideration when searching for the best web host.
Webhost Speed and Reliability
Your web hosting company should guarantee that all their servers will have optimum up time 24/7 and with very minimal or no downtime at all.
The best ones will offer you an uptime of 99% to motivate you in getting in. This means your website should be able to load faster on that particular host.
You wouldn’t want a scenario where your visitors get bored due to slow load speed of your website. In fact, a slow loading speed can cause users to leave your site and an increased bounce rate for your website. Make sure you find out the guaranteed uptime of any hosting company you decide on.
Disk Space and Bandwidth
The big shots in web hosting will offer you an impressive amount of disk space. You wouldn’t want to run out of disk space if your website requires you to install more scripts or have many files in your file manager. Your website's functionality might be very limited with very little disk space, so this aspect is worth finding out from your choice host.
Bandwidth is another important factor to consider when you start getting loads of traffic. Some of the best hosting companies provide a large deal of bandwidth space, some even give you unlimited for their most basic plan, though it is uncommon. More bandwidth will require you move to a higher plan including possibly terabytes of disk space.
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Customer Support Services
When you're looking for a good web hosting service, this is a critical feature to consider. A bad customer support can create many obstacles for you when managing your hosting.
A great web hosting company should have a 24/7 customer support to attend to your needs and solve any problems pertaining to your website’s hosting.
If you're running an eCommerce business, for example, it would be critical for you to have access to a customer support that can solve issues that occur any time of the day. This is especially true when your business is on the line because of a website hosting fault.
Pricing and Promotions
Make concerted efforts to check out the prices for each hosting plan, taking into consideration the factors listed above to find the most competitive and most affordable. Compare each plan and you will surely find the best hosting company perfectly fitted for your needs. I often found that the best strategy was to check for promotions being offered by various companies. These promotions can often save you a lot of money over your first year or two.
Have a Plan
Lastly, before making a choice of the hosting company to pitch your tent on, you must have a plan and be sure of what you need. If you run a personal website or blog that would not require much space, then go for a cheap plan. If you need lots of space for your large website that gets lots of traffic, then move over to a more extensive plan. They may be pricier, but they will offer great features to accommodate your needs.
The Best Web Hosting Companies
So, what are some of the best we hosting companies out there? Here, I've listed four that can help you get started. Whether you're a big or small company, remember to consider the factors above before deciding on one.
Hostgator.com - HostGator Web Hosting
HostGator is a big time web host. It is steady and dependable. If you are concerned with pricing, they frequently offer great promotions to get new clients in the door. They offer a wide variety of hosting packages that can appeal to businesses big and small. HostGator is one of my personal favourites.
GoDaddy.com - GoDaddy Web Hosting
GoDaddy is a marketing machine. They became the most popular, main stream web hosting company shortly after their notorious Super Bowl commercials aired in 2005. As they continued to grow, web experts became critical of the actual server specs they offered. Overcrowded shared servers and long site loading times were an inconvenience to many of their customers. However, in the past few years GoDaddy has drastically improved what they are offering users on their shared packages and have recaptured the hearts of many web developers.
Bluehost.com - Bluehost Web Hosting
Bluehost is one of the easiest hosts for setting up a new site. They are known to be one of the most secure web hosts around and offer numerous third party plugins for additional safety. Their parent company also owns HostMonster, which is another reputable host.
Dreamhost Web Hosting
Dreamhost offers many high-end server options. It can be a bit more challenging to get started and isn’t as beginner-friendly, but if you are a savvy website administrator this may be the best choice for you. They do not have a site builder like the options above, but this is still rated by Editor’s Choice as one of the best overall web hosting services.
Do you have any other web hosting service you could recommend? Let me know in the comments!
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Nice post,
It’s really good please keep it up…
Thanks for sharing
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If you want to sink a company, go with Bluehost. The worst host out there!
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Thanks for your comment Mark! Are there specific things you feel Bluehost lacks compared to other hosting companies?
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Very informative and well put together. I think GoDaddy is one of the best hosting platform these days as it is one that I have been using for years now. Godaddy is also good for new users: I usually have friends ask how to go about setting one up and just like in your article I tell them to sit down and come up with a plan as far as what you want to do with the website and how much is the budget that your working with. I haven’t checked out Host Gator but I will give it a glimpse thanks to your article. Thanks for sharing!!!
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Shamori, GoDaddy has made a lot of improvements in recent years, especially on their shared packages. I probably wouldn’t have recommended them 5 years ago, but nowadays, they are as good as anyone.
Hope you have some good experiences with HostGator!
on
Nice, informative and deeply elaborated post. I think Bluehost is one of the best hosting platform these days as it it used by some of the best websites and most of the bloggers recommends this because its SEO friendly and easy to install as they provides one click installation option. Godaddy is also good for new users and yes no doubt if someone is money concerned than Hostgator is the best option. Thanks for sharing.
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My pleasure.
Thanks for your feedback, Rajeev.
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Hello, I would also recommend that a good benefit to have for a web hosting company is one that really helps to support a lot of internet marketing options. One of the most important of course being that of SEO for the benefit of ranking, and ranking well! In addition, ones that support things such as proper redirects with a low bounce rate, and others that allow you to send out bulk mail to your subscribers. Either way, great post and looking forward to reading more in the future 🙂
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Hi Larry,
Thanks for the comment & good points! Some hosting companies make it much easier for customers to perform SEO and other helpful services.