How to choose a Hosting Provider

Hosting Services,are not Digital Marketing Job, actually, still a Digital Marketer should have knowledge about servers. Servers are the home for the business website. Your website analytics and speed depends on the server you own for your website.

Most of the hosting providers are also trying to expand their network because of digital demand, therefore it's too much confusing for a layman, for whom and why to choose the particular service provider.

First Let's understand what do you mean by Hosting Provider?

In layman language, you can say they provide home for the website on a rental basis, where your website can stay.

But in actual it's a server who has the ability to rapidly scale your website as your target audience grows and the resiliency to handle sudden bursts of high traffic.

You can get hosting providers in wide range starting from 800 to 5000 rupees a month but if you have a steady and long running business, you can probably go for cloud, virtual private server, or managed service whichever suits you.

Before taking any decision on servers you must have clarity on these particular matters mentioned below.

Types of Servers

1. Decide how much hand-holding you'll need

2. Amount of traffic you expect

3. Portable Content Management System

4. Unlimited Offers

5. Own your Domain Name

Q1: Types of Servers you need to know?

A1: Shared Servers, Cloud Servers, Virtual Private Server

Shared Servers are quite affordable. One server is having more than one website which is owned by different businesses.

The biggest disadvantage which everyone faces the performance of your particular website depends on other websites. It also limits you to access to the server's capabilities, and also limits you to upload files via FTP or SFTP, it prevents shell access, restrict programs which you can run on the services. Also limit the amount of database access from which your site can perform.

Cloud Servers: It may be a better choice for many of the business owners. Cloud servers generally run on public clouds and not small companies but Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure also offers cloud servers.

Service providers can build whatever configuration is needed by their customers. The big benefit of cloud servers is that you can have space which never filled with the data. If you need to handle big traffic surge, just pay your provider more money.

Virtual Private Servers: You can call it a Dedicated Server which is given to you only and no one else will be able to use it unless the owner of that particular space wants. It's the same as having a server sitting behind your desk, except it's located in a service provider's data center. If you need privacy you can go for VPS.

Q2: Decide how much Support you'll need?

A2: Basic customer service provides access to email, ticket and phone support, but Turnaround time may vary. Some service providers even offer 24-hour phone support.

If you want to authorise any hosting provider to look after your website then you should go for Managed Services, Managed service providers will make sure your system is configured properly for your load, keep an eye on security issues, patch your software as needed and manage backups among other tasks.

Q3: Amount of Traffic you expect?

A3: Before going further you should have a clear picture of your website and be true to yourself because you don’t want to crash your server because of traffic coming to your website. Amount of traffic on your website decides the capacity of the server you need.

Q4: Portable Content Management System

A4: Most of the hosting providers are very good but time changes, management also changes so make sure your site is not locked to any host and make sure about flexibility that you can transfer your website to any other server in future and most important backup of the whole website easily.

Q5: Unlimited Offers?

A5: Always keep in mind when you are choosing server no company gives unlimited offers which can long last. If anyone is claiming that they are providing then you should always keep an eye on them and on your website.

This deal often isn't what it seems to be. If you pay few bucks a month for hosting, there will likely be something in your terms of service allowing your hosting provider to either throttle your performance or shut you down after a certain usage level.

Q6: Own your Domain Name?

A6: Yes, you should own your domain name on your Official Mail so that you dont have to depended on your service provider, if needed to be changed in future.

According to CNET, you can choose from Best Web Hosting Providers for 2019