Basically, hosting and its server are everything that’s needed to exist for almost every website.
Some big companies use their own servers, but usually websites are literally hosted on hosting services. Microsoft Azure, by the way, is basically one of the largest hosting solutions for Big Tech with tremendous performance suited for large-scale projects.
But if you’re not a Big Tech and a small company with an e-shop, an aspiring startup with a simple website or a complete beginner with one-page just for some ads for your handmade stuff, you need to choose simpler solutions. Therefore, you need to be picky and considerate when you're choosing a hosting before you start working with your very own website.
And to be picky you need to understand where to look at, what to choose, what is vital and all that. Simply put, you need some knowledge about what you will be working with and how hostings actually work. Otherwise you’ll lose yourself in tons of information even before the beginning.
Website hosting services in a nutshell
If you are not working with websites, you probably don’t even know that every single one of them is backed up by hardware that is in the basic terms no different from a simple computer. But it’s not the same thing by all means. In a nutshell, that’s what you really need to have your website – your own specific hardware to store the data and provide functionality. But this specific hardware is not something you can get for cheap.
That’s when hosting services come into light to help website owners with achieving their projects’ Internet presence by giving them all required hardware performance and other services for some subscription fee. Simply put, hosting is a place to place, literally host, your website. With its help you’ll be able to do all the same things as if you had your own hardware, but without all the hassle and expense of buying and installing it all.
In more technical terms, hosting is a company that, in various ways, lends performance and storage capabilities of their servers or data-centers to website owners. In addition to that, hosts provide technical support for its customers, being responsible for accessibility and stable operation of their servers.
Basic hosting features you need to know about
First things first, if you want to find the most suitable hosting for your website, you need to know what you’re looking for. In other words, you must understand what your website really needs and how much resources it will take to make everything work as it should.
Therefore, if you know all this, you will be able to pick a proper type of hosting. And there are three main types of hosting services and one advanced one that’s not suitable for every website but has a variety of auxiliary uses.
- Virtual shared hosting. That’s the type of service where a lot of websites are using the same server or data-center. Simply put, it’s like a dormitory for websites with bad neighbors, shared resources and one solid ban for everyone if things go south because of one of the hosted websites. On the other hand, shared hosting is the cheapest solution that’s almost perfect for novices with simple websites.
- Virtual dedicated (private) hosting. Almost the same thing as shared hosting, but like a dorm where your website has a whole floor reserved for its needs. Such hosting involves allocating a static amount of performance resources to one particular website without sharing it with other websites based on the same server. In fact, it is a virtual server based on a shared server.
- Private server hosting. This type of hosting service is, as its name suggests, a real hardware dedicated solely to one website without sharing its resources with others. Practically the most expensive type among hostings, but it’s worth it if you need some real performance for a complex website.
- Cloud hosting. It was already mentioned with Microsoft Azure as an example, but it is still worth describing. This is the most advanced type of hosting as of now, and it’s based on cloud technology with the decentralized array of servers. Those servers create a network cloud and it serves as a hosting server for websites. But its very expensive for beginners. On the other hand, the cheapest subscription on the cloud hosting will be the best thing as a backup in case your main hosting becomes shut.
There’s basically everything you really need to know about modern hostings. Practically, all the basics about hostings and its variations was described above with some additional information for you to consider. And when you choose one that’ll be the most suitable, you must test it from all angles no matter how reliable it is at first glance.
Therefore, you should set up a website monitoring, because it’ll be vital for your website in the future anyways. For instance, opt-in for the best among others 24/7 website status checker – host-tracker service to monitor your website and test your hosting’s reliability.
But before you pick yourself the most suitable type of hosting, you need to know how to choose the best provider for it. Because there are features that may be of variable importance depending on what you need. And there are features that are a must for the best hosting.
Vital features the best hosting must have
To pick the best hosting among the many, you must know how to determine what is good and what is bad for it in terms of providing the best customer experience and website stability. Therefore, it’s vital for you to get the gist of everything hostings are made of and what to look at when choosing. And there are some things that are really vital for such services.
Clear pricing policies
The very first thing you think about when choosing the best product for your needs is its price. Every customer wants to know what he’s paying for, so if there are some shady things in pricings, then such a web host is a no-go for anyone.
Therefore, the best hosting should have the most transparent and understandable pricing to be the best. Otherwise customers start doubting such a service.
Reliability, accessibility and uptime
Almost every single hosting boasts 99.99% guaranteed uptime. And this number is possibly legit, if we’re talking about really reliable services approved by their customers.
Because high uptime means high degree of the website accessibility for its users, short and fast maintenance and low probability of shutdowns as well as other server-related issues. Moreover, reliable hostings have a refund policy for cases when their uptime is lower than guaranteed and this fact is proved.
With such a host that has an uptime to downtime ratio higher than 99% and at least as close to 99.9% as possible, your website will be operating stable on the server side.
In case there’s nothing wrong with your website, it will work perfectly and will be accessible to its audience most of the time. You should use the tool to check server uptime monitoring – host-tracker.com to prove that the website's uptime ratio is at its best.
Bandwidth and access speed
Uptime and accessibility is one thing for the website, and bandwidth is the other. The latter refers to the speed of access to the server and to the website as well. Some services provide limited bandwidth, especially shared hostings, but nowadays it’s usually unlimited.
But there are, of course, cases with shared servers when some of your neighbors are eating the whole traffic and throttling your own website’s bandwidth.
There’s also a possibility that bandwidth will be throttled on sales or holidays. And that’s the most vital thing for e-stores and such. Because if your traffic is lower than it should be, then your audience, your potential customers, won’t be able to access your website or work with it properly.
If such a thing happens, then there’s time for you to switch to another hosting or at least to another service plan. Because, obviously, your current service can’t handle the load.
And if you opt-in for a hosting, then you already know what you should do to prove its worth or have a proof for your complaints if something happens. In the case of bandwidth and loading speed, to track site with hosttracker web monitoring tools is the best thing to do.
Because that’s the only thing you can really do to prevent various slowdowns from happening and have a solid check on the reliability of the hosting of your choice.
Storage space
Almost always limited, the amount of available storage space varies from provider to provider. Therefore, it’s the thing you need to think hard about before you choose the most suitable hosting.
Because it hardly depends on how much data you will need to store for your website. Sometimes just a small storage will be more than enough, and sometimes you need a whole lot of space to store all your website’s files.
Nevertheless, the best hosting providers allow you to choose storage space to meet your requirements. Some of them even have adjustable storage so that you’ll be able to determine how much space you need and change it on the fly. Sometimes this service is paid separately though, but sometimes variable storage is included in some subscription plans.
Support service
This feature is a must for every hosting, but some of the platforms have slow and unreliable support. Such services are a no from the start, because as soon as you run into the server-side trouble, you will be left waiting for the response.
On the other hand, there are services with quick and responsive support teams that’ll help you with solving issues in no time. That’s especially vital for those who have little to no technical skills or experience.
Scalability
For the sake of the future development of your website you need to look for hosting that allows you to demand more resources as your website grows. Therefore, it’s a must for the best hosting to have solutions for such cases.
For example, the simple ability to switch service subscription and hosting type on the go is already a huge advantage for every website owner. As an alternate approach hosting could have a scalable subscription package so that you’ll be able to manually adjust everything along with adjusting fees.
Security and backup features
If your website is simple and has no database with user’s personal and payment information, then you don’t need such things like security features, antiviruses, anti-malware software, DDoS protection and so on. But the situation will be completely different if your website is an e-store.
Although most web hostings have security in place, usually the most complex measures are included only in the most expensive subscriptions. But there are providers with security features included in all their services by default. Those services are usually among the best on the market. Because they follow the wise policy of securing the websites of all their customers.
Backup features are almost in the same situations – most hosters provide such services only for most expensive subscriptions. On one hand, this is reasonable.
On the other hand, there are cases when you don’t need most of the other features included in your package, but you need backups. And there are some services that provide a separate backup feature with a separate subscription fee.
