Hello, My friend and a very warm welcome back. Choosing a hosting provider is something you need to consider for your blog but how do you decide which is the best one? This post is going to cover How To Choose The Best Hosting Provider For Your Blog.
What is web hosting?
Web hosting services look after the servers that house websites. When you pay for a hosting plan, you are renting space on a server that stores all the data needed for people to view your website. Hosting services can vary in prices starting from just a few dollars a month and up to thousands of dollars.
What do we need to take into consideration is the first question we need to answer when choosing a provider?
How much experience and knowledge do you have?
How much Traffic do you think your blog will generate over time?
Do you know if you need shared hosting or a dedicated server?
When I chose my hosting I was a total newbie so I chose the hosting based on what else I got with it. I will cover this in more detail shortly.
There are so many choices available it can be an absolute minefield and I’m going to cover some tips to help you to make an informed choice.
Top Tip: hosting should have support, speed, and security. Your website is something that needs to be protected at all costs.
You may need to change the host at some point so, look for a provider with migration services.
Let’s dive in and learn more about what is important in a hosting provider:
Is There A Free Trial?
There are a lot of hosting providers that offer a free trial period for a certain length of time it can be for 7 days or so, This gives you a chance to try everything to see if it has all you need and want.
If it does then you can go on to purchasing it. If it’s not what you are looking for then no money has been exchanged and you can move on with your search.
Customer Support
Customer support is important for many reasons but it is most important when you are a newbie as you will probably make many mistakes in the beginning.
Support can be found in many different forms, there can be live support in the form of a chatbox, phone support, emailing, and opening a support ticket on a dedicated platform.
A factor to take into consideration is you don’t want your website to be down for hours so choose a managed service that will carry out backups, deal with security issues, and will make sure your system is configured properly.
These specifics will keep your website running instead of it crashing!
Can you imagine clicking a link and being directed to an error page, that would not be a good look, would it?
Ensure there is a high upline percentage preferably 99%.
Storage Options
As your website grows with more quality content, images and videos it is going to take up a lot of space.
Check out the storage options of the provider you are considering, in the beginning, it could start as very affordable but when you need more they can charge a lot of money for that privilege.
Some may not offer the amount of storage you need in that case you will have to go elsewhere.
I always look for an unlimited plan then I don’t need to worry about that aspect.
Website Speed Matters
If your website loads slowly it will affect your customer user experience and Google will penalize your site by not ranking it very high. Many people believe the search engines are all about SEO and while that is a big factor it isn’t the only one to consider!
So, with that fact in mind see if the service you are considering offers a good loading speed. it can be the difference between a user remaining actively consuming your content or being annoyed by the slow load and leaving your page.
Is There A Monthly Traffic Limit?
When your website only has a few visitors every month it’s not going to use very much bandwidth, However, the day will come when your pages reach the top of the SERPs and then it will be getting thousands of visitors a day!
Certain web hosting providers have a monthly cap on the amount of traffic. If that is the case one of 2 things will occur:
1. They will stop displaying your site and that will be a disaster! or
2. You will be charged an extra fee which can cost you a ton of money each month on top of what you were already paying.
Try to choose where possible a provider with unlimited data so that neither of those things can happen!
Does The Service Provide Content Management?
There are providers around that offer content management in the form of a WordPress site. As your business is going to be predominantly writing content opt for one that gives you this service.
If the content is not going to play a big part then this will not matter as much!
This post may contain affiliate links. This means if you click a link and make a purchase I will receive a commission. The price you pay will not be affected.
Security Of Your Data
Your website is your business and it can be difficult to trust a web host with it.
No matter what we think there will always be unforeseen circumstances when things can go terribly wrong and then is when backup comes into its own.
Backups ensure that your website is always where it should be online.
Payment Methods
Web hosting services can have many different payment schemes. There are some very cheap ones that only offer certain services such as shared hosting and that doesn’t mean they are bad.
In the same token, you can get some that are really expensive and usually come in the form of a dedicated server that doesn’t necessarily make them better but it is the option I went for.
Depending on the amount of money you have to spend always take into consideration how long the hosting is going to be for, some are monthly and others yearly. You can usually save money if you opt for the yearly option.
Choose the option that best suits your needs!
Now we are going to look at some possible providers for you.
1. DreamHost
DreamHost offers a custom control panel, which allows you to easily manage your own hosting. There is live phone customer support but not available 24/7, the provider responds quickly to live chat and tickets. DreamHost provides superfast SSDs for all its storage options, also comes with a free SSL certificate (for more secure web browsing) and provides SSH access for certain plans that are for more technical users.
They offer low starting prices.
Better business bureau A+ Rated.
The only downside is the phone support isn’t available 24/7.
2. GoDaddy
GoDaddy most people associate them with domain names, but, that is not all they do, it also offers a variety of web hosting services, including WordPress, WordPress eCommerce and reseller hosting.
The GoDaddy basic shared hosting plan includes unlimited bandwidth, and a one-click WordPress install option, + a free domain name and Office 365 email only available for the first year.
GoDaddy has 24/7 phone support and a live chat option as well.
BBB rated A+
3. Wealthy Affiliate Hosting
Wealthy Affiliate Is my number 1 recommendation, not only does it provide hosting, but it also comes with a free trial.
Also included is The use of Jaxxy which is a keyword research tool, And 10 lessons of training.
Upgrade to the Premium membership and receive:
10 Websites for you to build out ($100/mth value)
Unlimited Support available 24/7, 365 days a year via a help tab
52+ Expert Training Classes Per Year
All Levels Of The Core Training Which totals 120 Modules
Jaaxy Lite Keyword Research Tool ($19/m Value)
The Premium + Membership includes all of the above options as well as:
50 Hosted Websites that you can manage ($250/mth value)
Unlimited Priority Support
200+ Expert Training Classes Per Year
All Levels of Core Training (120 lessons)
Jaaxy Enterprise Keyword Research Tool ($99/mth value)
Regardless of which package you choose, you will also have a website builder and WordPress websites.
Daily backups with the paid options, and, hacking prevention, SiteSpeed Extreme Caching, Google Pagespeed Optimized, DDos Protection, Instant DNS, 250,000 Monthly Visits with premium and 1,000,000 Monthly Visits with premium +, SiteContent Publishing Platform, and A duplicate content checker.
So much more than just hosting, you will also receive free domain names with paid options
There is a choice of monthly and yearly billing, a discount is offered if you opt for the yearly option.
Conclusion
If you pay close attention to the tips that have been covered here, you will have a lot more confidence when dealing with how to choose the best web hosting provider.
Even armed with this knowledge it’s always worth remembering the most important pieces of information: there are several different website hosting services and you have to recognize your needs to obtain the type of plan that best fits your purpose.
The good news, nowadays, the providers themselves are more and more aware of this, so they already offer packages targeted to different requirements.
Always carry out your due diligence before making a purchase.
Thanks for supporting me to the end of this post I appreciate your time.
Have a question for me then please leave it in the comments below and I will get back to you as soon as possible.
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Lisa. Founder and CEO of mistakesbloggersmake.com 🙂
