Website hosting is an important consideration for all businesses nowadays. When it comes to web hosting solutions there is a huge number of options to choose form.
But how do you know which is the best one for your needs?
There are countless review sites out there all touting different hosting companies. However, while some reviews will be genuine, others are put forth primarily because the hosting company is paying a commission to the reviewer.
Therefore, it is prudent to do our own research and look a little deeper into the different options that are available to us.
I am not saying don’t read web hosting reviews, this would be dumb as they certainly can provide a lot of insight into the different options that are out there. However, it is important not to just trust the first one you read.
Top 7 Things To Look For In A Good Hosting Company
There are so many things to consider when choosing the best hosting company for you. However, we like to start off with the seven things listed below. For us, these are a must.
24/7 Support
There’s a lot that can go wrong with tech on a day to day basis. If your business and livelihood is relying on your website then you want to make sure you have good technical support in place.
A good hosting provider will have a solid support package in place. We like to look for hosting companies that provide 24/7 support and can be reached via live chat and phone.
This ensures that if your website goes down you can get tech support to the phone or on live chat any time of the day or night to get it sorted.
When I comes to tech support we also look for hosting companies that have a very fast response time to your queries.
Gzip Compression Enabled
Having Gzip compression enabled at server level means that you can quickly and easily compress your website’s content at the click of a button.
Some hosting companies do not have it enabled, but they do activate it for you if you request it. This is also okay. However, if they do not have the facility for you to be able to switch it on yourself and they will not activate it fro you then I would recommend to look for another hosting company.
Free SSL
Since 20018 all websites now need to have an active and secure SSL certificate. This change was instigated by Google in an attempt to make the internet more secure, which is a good thing.
If your website does not have an SSL certificate then popular browsers like Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox will not show your content to your visitors.
Some hosting companies are still charging their customers to activate an SSL certificate. However, fortunately many are now providing a basic SSL certificate for free when you sign up with them.
Fast Load Times
If your site loads slowly then it will get demoted in the search results. Having a fast loading site is also important for your visitors as it improved the user experience.
Many hosting providers, unfortunately, have incredibly slow loading times and you need to spend time and sometimes money trying to speed up your website, often to no avail.
When this happens, switching hosting provider is often the best solution.
So, in our opinion, it is well worth paying a bit more money to buy a hosting solution that has fast loading times.
Good Up Time
If your site goes down too often then this, of course, is not good for business. You want to make sure that your choose a hosting provider who guarantees a good percentage uptime. At the very least, you want to go for a hosting provider that guarantees at least 99.99% uptime.
Good Security
Security is an extremely important consideration when choosing a hosting provider. The last thing you want to do is leave yourself open to hackers and malware. This can wreak havoc on your business and cost you a lot of time and money.
Besides installing good security software yourself, you also want to make sure that your hosting company is also providing good security form their end. It is also a good sign if your hosting company does regular malware scanning for you. While a lot of hosting companies will charge extra for this service, there are some that include it in your hosting package.