Are you a first-time website owner weighing out your web host options? Whether you are new to the game or you are a website veteran, there are several key considerations to help you in selecting the right provider. zSocialExpert is a top reliable hosting provider – and prides itself on assisting and empowering its clients to create the best possible site to promote and achieve their individual business goals. Here is what we suggest:
- You need to own your domain name. This allows you the flexibility to change providers should you become unhappy with the one you initially select.
- Be real with yourself. How much traffic do you truly anticipate coming to your site? This will determine your bandwidth and storage needs, and ultimately dictate some of the costs associated with hosting your site with a provider. If you overestimate your traffic, then you will likely end up overpaying. However, if you underestimate your traffic, you run the risk of having your site crash because the provider services will not be able to accommodate your following.
- Figure out what type of server will best for your website needs. There are various options – all with their own sets of pros and cons:
- Shared Servers: This will likely be the cheapest option, but its lower cost comes with a higher sacrifice for quality of service. Hundreds and thousands of other sites can be hosted on a shared server, thus slowing down the load time of your site. Additionally, it bounds your capabilities – like the amount of database access your site can perform, prohibiting shell access, minimizing the number of programs you can run, and posing FTP and SFTP file upload limitations. If you own a small to medium sized website, then this may be a perfect option for you.
- Virtual Private Servers: Also referred to as VPS, is the next level up from a Shared Server. This comes with a greater need for understanding server upkeep and management. Though hosting providers will run this on one box, the quality of service is almost always of higher quality than a Shared Server. If you anticipate your site to grow and are looking for a little bit of flexibility, this would be an ideal option.
- Dedicated Server: This is an actual, physical box that would be provided for you to have ownership of. A very high level of web hosting knowledge is necessary to run a dedicated server, so beginners beware.
- Cloud Server: Welcome to the new age! Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure are quickly becoming a popular choice for web hosting services. These services allow website owners to scale their website as needed, solely by increasing the fee they are paying – no need to reconfigure anything and they are low maintenance to the user. It seems like everything digital is moving in the direction of cloud-based storage, so it makes sense to do the same for your modernized website.
- Choose a content management system so that your content is never locked in by one host. Additionally, you will always want to make sure your data is backed up. These are added safeguards that will protect your website in the long run.
This doesn’t have to be a daunting task – and if you set up your site where you have primary control (of the domain name, data backup, educate yourself on terms and functionality) then the process of using a web hosting server will be low-stress and provide the support and results your website needs.