How Not To Choose a Bad Web Hosting?
Choosing a bad host can cause endless hours of headaches. The good news is, you are in total control of choosing a web host that works best for you. Here are the 10 Ways to Protect Your Business from a Bad Web Host.
It is great to have a website that has eye-pleasing designs, quality content and powerful functionalities. But none of that matters, if your website is not hosted on a trustworthy hosting service. A reliable web host not only keeps your site up but also provides it a good ranking in search engine results. Apart from this, a true good hosting provider also ensures that you get adequate resources and support whenever you need.
Unfortunately, choosing a good web host is not a child’s play. As every day a new hosting provider is popping out in the market, it is quite challenging to determine which is good or which is bad.
Don’t worry, we have put together few tips that will help you avoid choosing a bad web hosting provider. Let’s take a look at these tips.
1. Avoid Hosting Service That Doesn't Come With a Trial Period
Web hosting companies should provide at least 30-days trial period. The providers that don’t come with a money-back guarantee or any trial period are usually unassured about the services they offer. Therefore, it is better to avoid such companies.
2. Read Reviews
Most of the people, especially newbies often get captivated by a hosting provider that seems ideal in the first search. It is easy to jump at the first attractive hosting plan you find interesting, but remember you may feel trapped later on if the provider is not enough competent to fulfill your website's needs. So, what is the solution?
Well, in order to find out if the hosting provider is a good fit, check out their reviews on genuine review websites. Some important things to look for are:
- How many complaints and compliments are there?
- How strong is the provider in terms of security and hardware infrastructure?
- How is the provider in terms of speed?
Besides this, it is also necessary to distinguish fake reviews. Some signs of dishonest reviews are:
- Extremely positive comments.
- Poorly written articles.
- Short benchmarks that don’t come with any opinion or explanation.
For example, this Site5 review has almost all of the points mentioned above. So if you want to find true good web hosting try to find true detailed reviews.
3. Conduct Research About Background
This will definitely help you avoid choosing a bad web host. As you know, there is no dearth of companies that claim to be the best, it is crucial to conduct enough research about their background. Things you might like to know are:
- The growth of the provider over the year.
- Whether or not the provider is accredited by ICANN.
- Feedback on local search engines, etc.
4. Compare Features and Pricing
As an entrepreneur, you want to get the best hosting deal for your site. However, for that, you will have to compare features and prices of different hosting plans. Take your time to conduct a research. Make a list of hosting providers that best suit your requirements. See which company is offering all the required features at affordable price. Don’t go for providers that charge too high unless there is a good reason.
5. Keep Eye On The Load Time
The amount of time your website takes to load can be a big factor whether or not your visitors will convert into sales.
According to a research, people often leave a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. Therefore, it is necessary for you to pay attention to the load time of your site as well. If your hosting provider does not offer adequate bandwidth, you are more likely to see this issue. So, it is better to avoid such hosts. The tools like Pingdom, GTmetrix can help you optimize the speed of your site.
6. Check Out Their Payment Method
Another important way to avoid a bad web hosting is to see how the payment method of your preferred hosting provider works. It is easy to go for an automated payment option but if you have to cancel it, sometimes, it may get failed. See if you have an option to pay through PayPal or debit card. These options are considered easier to cancel anytime.
7. Check if Your Preferred Provider Offers Regular Backup
Website breakdown is the biggest disaster for a website owner. Whether it is caused by hackers or a result of poor server maintenance, all your hard work will go to waste in a minute, if you don’t get a proper backup system.
Avoid such companies that don’t provide options to create a backup. It is always an advantage to host with a provider that offers an automatic backup feature.
8. See Uptime Record
A good uptime is important because it ensures that your site is available to your customers. Indeed, it is the measure of time your hosting server remains up and running. 99% uptime is considered ideal uptime if your website is hosted on a shared hosting plan.
Occasional downtime for maintenance or upgrade is acceptable but you should avoid providers that can’t provide even 99% uptime for a shared hosting plan.
The best way to know the uptime of your preferred company is to track it on your own. There are many free tools available that can help you monitor uptime such as Uptime Robot, WHSR Uptime Monitor, and Pingdom.
9. Analyze Customer Support
Never go with a web host that does not provide adequate customer support. Make sure a provider gives you at least one medium to access their support team. It is better to choose a company that offers 24/7 technical support so that you are able to interact with someone who can give your prompt and accurate solutions to your query.
10. Unprofessional Website
Most of the people don’t take it into consideration, but it can help you determine how professional a hosting provider is. If a hosting provider has an unprofessional website, which is not understandable in design and layout, then why should people trust them, If the company is not able to take care of their own website, will they take care of the needs of their customer's site?
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| 10 things to consider before choosing a Web hosting provider |
Final Words
Hosting is one of the crucial aspects of your site. As a result, it is recommended that you make adequate research to find a good hosting provider because a small mistake can put a big effect on your website performance, its search engine ranking, and sales. We hope, the tips mentioned in this post will help avoid picking up a bad web host.
17 comments
SiteGround provides fantastic service. I know they rocks.
Really nice and insightful. I liked it the way you segmented the complete information into 10 points.
Thanks! :sl