If you are setting up a website for the very first time then it is likely that you don’t know much about web hosting. When you are launching a website there are so many different elements to consider – you have to think about your content, your layout, what pages to use and a whole list of other things. So, thinking about which web host to choose and why, is going to add to your long list of tasks to do.

The problem with web hosting companies is that they try to dazzle people with jargon and sometimes use overly complicated descriptions for their features. When it is your first time getting a website set up, you just want something simple and easy to understand. You don’t want to spend days and days researching each web host and trying to see what the main differences are between each host. The reality is that most good web hosts offer very similar and in some cases identical plans but that will still be some that are better solutions than others.

To give you an idea of what you should be looking out for in a web host here are some of the key features that you may need:

High levels of performance

Whilst some web hosts offer a really fast performing server (which will make your website perform faster), there are plenty of other hosts that unfortunately are really not good in terms of performance. So you need to make sure that you pick a host that offers a high level of performance. To help you to do this you should read reviews previous or existing customers have given for the host you are considering. If you already have a website set you can test your website performance using the free performance testing tool such as Pingdom.com.

Performance is really important especially in terms of getting conversions from your website and this is the main purpose of actually having a website.So don’t cut corners when it comes to your web host performance as it will probably cost you more in terms of missed business opportunities.

Cost

When you are first starting out with a business you might not have a huge marketing budget at your disposal. So the cost of the different elements of your marketing strategy will be getting heavily scrutinised. Web hosting plans vary greatly in terms of cost. You can get completely free hosting solutions, you can get shared hosting solutions at around 5 pounds per month and you can also pay larger sums of money for dedicated hosting.

Which one you choose out of these options comes down to your specific requirements. For example, if you just want a simple basic, website free or shared hosting options will probably do the job. However, if you expect to have a lot of traffic going to your website and you’re looking for high levels of security then dedicated hosting maybe a better option for you.

Storage and bandwidth

Both storage and bandwidth are very important in terms of what you are going to get out of your website. Ask yourself whether you are going to be getting lots of traffic to your website. How much content are you going to be putting on your website? Will website users be downloading content from your website? These factors all apply when you are deciding on hosting package as they offer different allowances.

Customer support

This could end up being the most important factor of all. Imagine you just set up your new website, you’ve spent ages creating great content and uploading it onto your website. You carefully craft an email campaign to direct along list of qualified leads to your website but then your website crashes because it can’t handle the traffic.

You are probably going to need some help from your web host and if you went for a free hosting option you are not entitled to any customer support at all. This is just one type of scenario but you could get all kinds of technical problems arising, not just at the start but throughout having a website, so it really does help to have a really good level of customer support to call upon when you need it.

Republished by Imagincreation