You simply cannot wish a website online – that is business for the magicians, charlatans and those who are not serious with their lives!
If you want a website online, you need to host it with a reputable hosting company.
However, before you attempt to do this, there are about 6 things you should take good note of well before you open either your purse or wallet.
To save you the stress of guessing what these are – or worse, falling prey to companies that have no iota of respect for them, we have today, compiled a list of the 5 most important things you need to consider when you think hosting.
Ready?
Here are the 6 most important things you should watch out for and ensure that a host has in place before entrusting your beloved website or blog to them.
Let’s fire!
Top 5 Things A Hosting Company Should Have Before You Commit
Now pay close attention, ladies and gentlemen – the show is about to begin in earnest 🙂
1. Great Support
In life, there is simply no one that will survive – or go far without (some form of) support.
Online, this reality is truer than the fact of the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, daily.
Without great support thus, a hosting company is simply a business entity, set up simply to sap up the money of the clients and (illegally) make the owner way richer.
If you’re interested in not being such a client or customer, it is a smart thing to ensure that before you pay anyone (or business) parading as a hosting company, you should first dig in and figure out the manner of support such a host offers to it clientele.
Now, this may appear challenging – especially if you’re a newbie.
However, the truth is that, it is way simpler than you can ever imagine: simply contact the prospective hosting company via its plethora of support channels as a non-customer and see how fast – and accurate they respond to your queries.
In ticking out this point, never rely on the word(s) of the host pe se or worse, what such a company may publish on its hosting homepage; for theoretically, every hosting company has the very best support in the entire industry until when called upon to make good that promise!
2. Free SSL
An SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) Certificate used to be a luxury – but that was circa 2005.
Today, this tiny little certificate is no more a luxury; it is one of the bare necessities that every site online ought to have.
The reasons are legion.
However, the two most 3 most important are:
- An SSL certificate is a ranking signal today.
- The presence of an SSL certificate facilitates trust – which translates to badass conversions.
- Finally, an SSL certificate ensures communication encryption on on your blog or website. This, in itself, is a huge security upgrade for any site that has such a system in place.
From (only) the 3 most important reasons why an SSL certificate is an awesome thing for blogs and websites looking to go online today, we’re convinced that you wouldn’t want your site online without this powerful little certificate protecting it.
However, there is a challenge…
Many hosting companies still think 2002 and do not, for once, imagine that sites hosted on their platforms (in this jet age of security) actually deserve awesome security or should even rank well on the SERPs!
What NONSENSE!!
To further this wrong and extremely selfish thinking, such hosting companies refuse to partner with free SSL certificate providers like Let’s Encrypt and instead, prefer to outrightly sell SSL certificates and hosting as two different services – making money from both.
This is greed and selfishness at its very height!
To avoid this never ending maze of greed and selfishness combined, it is a smart thing to always ensure that your intended hosting company offers you a FREE SSL CERTIFICATE before you sign up.
This is not something that you should NEVER buy (under the guise of an addon or whatever) today!
3. Great (Hosting) Speed
A slow website or blog makes for a super sad impression.
It is also a challenge when it comes to the business of conversion(s) or getting site visitors to stay long enough on your site to achieve what you desire for them.
Business (and reputation) wise, this is a spot you would rather not be found – an undesirable reality that you would not want either for your blog or website.
Sadly, this is where many hosting companies will today ‘comfortably’ put you – even if it means it will only be to their advantage.
This is a spot that you should resist – as if your actual life depends on it (after all, your business life – via your website or blog does).
Resisting is however not easy.
The reason?
Every hosting company today lays claim to great hosting speeds!
However, it is very easy to get to the root of this: log unto a website speed testing tool such as GTMetrix and see how well or sad the website of the hosting company itself performs.
The results will guild you accordingly 🙂
4. CPanel Availability
The CPanel, today, is the standard hosting software deployed by more than 90% of the hosting world.
However, there are some hosting providers that insist on propriety software for whatever reason they have.
While such reasons are legion, there is no justification whatsoever in reinventing the wheel while making the lives of customers and clients super difficult in the process!
For one, proprietary software ensures a steep learning curve when one starts with it or when one eventually ditches it for the regular cpanel hosting that is the standard.
Secondly, moving a website from a host that has failed to deploy cpanel is really a pain in the a**.
Finally, most proprietary software aimed at substituting or outrightly replacing the cpanel end up simply making a mockery of themselves and importantly reminding us all how important some things are that they can’t simply be substituted or easily replaced – especially with something (well) inferior.
Our advice here is devilishly simple: if a web hosting company does not deploy cpanel, simply forget about attempting to host with such a company – nothing good can really come out from such a union!
Recommended Reading: The True Cost Of Hosting A Website For A Year
5. Many Data Centers – Spread Across Continents
The world is such a huge place – a place the internet has luckily reduced to a ‘global village’.
However, truth be told: despite the world being a global village, its physical size cannot be overlooked – especially when the reality of hosting a website and making it available to the plethora of users the world over comes to bear.
Welcome to the world of latency 🙂
Now, what is this latency?
Put in a simple, lay man’s way: this is the period it takes to access a website from the time the demand for such access is made to the time it takes the hosting company to make such files available to the visitor making such a request.
What this means is that, the longer this takes, the chances of your visitor getting pissed off and using the ‘X’ button grows.
This is not something you will appreciate.
To avoid the challenge of latency – and to make your website super fast for visitors accessing it, it is important to make certain that the site is hosted on servers closest to the geographical locations of the visitors landing on such a site.
For instance, if the bulk of your visitors are from (or are expected to be from) Asia, it only makes sense to host your site using an Asian data center so that accessing it will be fast, easy and extremely painless for them.
However, this does not happen automatically: the host must first of all, be buoyant enough to have many data centers (and these data centers must be spread out across relevant continents).
This, ordinarily, should not be a challenge as a host typically displays all this information on its signup page and further gives you the freedom to choose from many data centers when signing up and after, the option of changing your choice should the need ever arise.
Think speed, think smart, choose the best data center that serves your needs – and that of your visitors.
Special Note:
Google Analytics is one of the most reliable ways of knowing which geographical location your existing traffic is coming from.
Further, tools like the Google Search Console and the plethora of keyword tools available today lets you create sites and content targeted at residents of a certain geographical location.
Be smart and use this to your utmost advantage!
6. Great Price Point
Finally, there is nothing that beats a great price; simple and short.
End of story.
However, you cannot simply end such an interesting tale in the manner of brevity this (sub) topic craves.
For a reason…
Even if something is the best in the world and sadly, it is well overpriced, there is simply no way you would be further interested in it – unless money is not truly a challenge to you.
Final end of story.
It thus makes sense that, to host a website or blog successfully in this age and time, you must look at the price the hosting company has named for its plans if you are not to go broke simply because of an online presence!
Our Recommendation
Reading up to this point, a question should be lingering on your mind by now – as it has lingered on the minds of all those who have bothered with these hosting basics before you: which are the chosen hosting services?
Or better still, which is the chosen hosting service?
This is not an easy question to answer and the reason is, well, obvious: there are hundreds of hosting companies in the whole wide world so why narrow down your options to just one?
Simple.
Only one hosting company has all the cool features and actually complies with all the points we listed here and explained.
In essence, it is the one hosting company TO RULE THEM ALL!
Now, to the million dollar question: what hosting company will this be or better, what hosting company is this?
We answer: SiteGround Hosting.
Why We Recommend SiteGround
Now, it is only rational to wonder: why on earth have we chosen SiteGround over and above all the other hosting companies that money can buy at the moment?
Our answer is simple and straight to the point: this hosting company ticks on all the points above and has some cool additions that are not even mentioned above!
For instance, aside offering super great support (you should test this for yourself and see), the company also offers free SSL, has truly great speeds, offers cpanel hosting, has data centers across 3 different continents and importantly, has a fair price tag to its hosting plans.
However, that is not all – the company further has some advantages that makes it truly stand out.
For instance:
- In the immediate past year, SiteGround had an amazing 98% client satisfaction rate!
- Aside strategically positioning servers virtually across the world, SG has developed a very special and powerful plugin, the SG Optimizer Plugin that is dedicated to the business of caching and making your site(s) with them super fast.
- Finally, SiteGround is pro security, making sure that your site(s) with them are ultra safe and free from harm. In the current year for instance, SiteGround wrote about 250 new custom firewall rules, mitigated 186 DDOS attacks, stopped about 7 million brute force attacks…the list is virtually endless!
Wrap Up
Hosting is serious business today – so serious that hosting companies are ready to do all sorts of things simply to get you to open your wallet or purse!
Please, don’t – not until you’ve read every single line of the article above.
Or, would you rather add up your money to the billions of Dollars that are made daily by way of deceit and false advertisement?