Website Hosting – Don’t Skimp Here

Website Hosting

Website hosting plays an important role in the success of your website. This is not the place to skimp to save a few bucks. Regardless of how much optimizing you do on your website, being saddled with slow hosting will kill your page load speeds. TTFB (Time To First Byte) is a crucial measurement and you want it under 200 milliseconds.

Anything over 300 is too slow. The first thing you should do if you are looking to get into website hosting is to find out what kind of plan you need. There are two main types of website hosting plans: Shared Hosting and VPS (Virtual Private Server). Shared Hosting In shared hosting, every website on your server is treated equally. This means that if 10,000 people are visiting your site, all 10,000 will use up the same amount of bandwidth, processing power and disk space. Of course, this means that your site will be down for everyone else whenever you have an update or make any kind of significant change to your website. If you are selling something that is time-sensitive, this could prove disastrous for you. On the other hand, shared hosting is very affordable.

Match your hosting to your anticipated needs. Don’t buy dedicated hosting for a small blog type website. Don’t go with the cheapest shared hosting for an e-commerce website.

Be realistic in evaluating your expected traffic when selecting hosting. You want your site to load fast. You want a reliable host with customer service you can count on. Trust me, you will need it.

Unless you are getting a lot of traffic to your website, it is unlikely that you will ever need to upgrade to a higher plan.

VPS (Virtual Private Server)

A virtual private server (VPS) is exactly what it sounds like – it’s a virtual machine within a virtual machine. This means that you have complete control over everything that goes on inside your “server” environment. For example, you can install any software you want, configure it however you choose and even run it as a separate operating system from the one that is running shared hosting. The main advantage of a VPS is that it gives you the ability to scale your website and its functionality up or down as your business demands. This means that you will never be locked into a set-up that is “hosted” on a particular server. You can always move your site to another server if the current one becomes too crowded.

A disadvantage of a VPS is that it is more expensive than shared hosting. However, the amount of power and flexibility you get with a VPS easily makes up for the extra cost.

Shared Website Hosting

With this type of hosting, you share the resources of an entire server with multiple other websites. This means that you will most likely experience significantly slower performance and much less functionality than you would with a VPS. Mailbox Hosting Some web hosts offer “mailbox” hosting as an option for their customers. With this type of hosting, you get everything a standard shared host offers plus you get to use whatever e-mail address you want. You do not have to use the web host’s e-mail address for any of your incoming or outgoing e-mails. There are many different factors to consider when choosing which hosting plan is right for you and your website. The most important decision you will need to make is how much memory (RAM) you will need for your website.

How Much RAM Do You Need?

The amount of memory (RAM) you need depends on how much functionality you will be getting from your web host. If you are going to be using your website mostly for e-commerce, you will probably need at least 1 gigabyte (GB) of RAM. However, if you just want a simple site with no complex functionality, you probably only need 512 megabytes (MB) of RAM.

Other Factors To Consider In Choosing Website Hosting

There are many factors to consider when choosing a web host. The three most important factors are price, features and support. Other factors include:

• Speed – How fast can the web host’s servers respond to your requests?
• Reliability – How often will the host be down for scheduled maintenance?
• Security – What security measures does the host take to protect against hackers?
• Uptime – How often will the host be down for unscheduled maintenance?
• Backups – Does the host make regular backups of your data and do they offer restore capabilities if needed?
• Control Panel – Does the host offer a convenient graphical interface for managing your site?
• Interface – How well does the host support standard HTML, JavaScript and CGI programs?
• Technical Support – Will the host be there when you need them and respond quickly? Etc., etc., etc.

Choosing A Web Host:

Decide How Much You Can Spend! There are many ways you can choose a web host. The first step is to decide how much you can spend. If you are on a budget, here are some options for you:

• Go with one of the low-cost, low-feature hosts such as BlueHost.com. Don’t expect these guys to provide much in the way of technical support and they won’t be around if you ever need them.
• Go with a higher-priced but more feature-rich host such as DreamHost.com.

Who do we use? We have a larger plan because we host a lot of websites. The hosting vendor we use is NameHero.com. Their customer support has been fantastic and they provide lots of great plusses other vendors do not. For example, they provide an SSL certificate (you should get one too) for free with every account!

We’re here to help if you have questions. Send us a note on our contact page and we’ll help you out.