The Do’s and Don’ts of Web Hosting

Building your business requires a lot of dedication and effort during the initial stages, and that doesn’t even include what goes into hosting, designing, and publishing your website. Your website, however, is likely going to be one of, if not the most important revenue streams and advertising channels for your business.

Web hosting is an essential part of building your site, and there are many things that first-time site builders don’t know to look for and, importantly, avoid. If you are not sure what type of hosting is best for your site, talk to a professional web designer. In most cases, they should be able to guide you in the right direction.

Do: Spend considerable choosing your name and domain

Many people are so eager to get started, and so excited by the web hosting option they’ve decided they like best, that they forget a website and business should have a name before all else. Sometimes the name you have your heart set on is already owned by another company or individual and their asking price just isn’t feasible.

Shopping around for a good name (one that is intuitive, available, and you can afford) should be the first thing you do before diving into a hosting package. Certain hosting packages come with their in-house web builders included, and you want to ensure its features are compatible with your name and brand image.

Don’t: Cheap out on the hosting package 

All business owners understand this one key axiom: you have to spend money to make money. That goes for online businesses as well. Many people mistakenly get into online business under the false assumption that they are going to get something for nothing.

While you certainly do have an almost infinitely larger market just within reach when you do business online – 67 percent of millenials prefer shopping online, as do 56 percent of gen X – setting up your site to attract and appeal to these people isn’t entirely free. Taking the cheapest hosting package you can find might come back to bite you.

Do: Conduct research into your web host

It would be an understatement to say that not all web hosts are created equal. Differences in page loading times, customer service, security, and other unforeseen bumps in the road can end up being the difference between effective online business and an enormous headache.

Make a shortlist of tentative web hosts and then look into what current and past users have to say about all of the above features. There are over 10,000 web hosting providers out there, so there will undoubtedly be plenty of riff-raff to weed out.

Conclusion

Once you have chosen your web host, that isn’t to say that you can’t change it down the road (though it often involves some hassle), but you are going to be relying on this company to ensure your site is up and running. Companies with poor track records, and whose users accuse them of not caring enough about their clients should be looked at with suspicion.