How to Choose a Web Hosting Service: An Ultimate Guide

By Ankit Main

How to choose a web hosting service or what key factors to consider when choosing a web hosting company are frequently asked beginners’ questions.

Most web companies in the market claim to provide the best service to their customers.

Is it true?

Probably the answer is ‘No.’

Although every web-hosting company promises to provide the required features and excellent customer support, they fail to keep their word.

So proper research before buying a web-hosting service is essential.

In this article, I will discuss how to choose a web hosting service for your website.

Before buying the web-hosting, take a look at the key points to be considered

  • Features & Add-ons
  • Reputation & Customer Reviews
  • Technical Support
  • Control Panel Quality & UI
  • Server Uptime
  • Email Service
  • Focused Areas
  • Future Upgrades
  • Hardware For Server
  • Speed
  • Price

Now we will discuss these points in detail. 

There are 11 key points to compare different web-hosting services and select the best suited for your purpose.

How to Choose a Web Hosting Service – 11 Key Points

1. Features & Add-ons

Once you decided to buy the hosting from a specific company, check features available in your plan — e.g., disk space, bandwidth, the number of websites for selected plans.

If your website regularly receives over 1K per day hits, it’s better to select the plan to handle such high traffic. 

Whenever your website runs out of bandwidth, it becomes unavailable to users.

Take an example.

I wanted to know the Marathi meaning of a word. So I searched www.marathidictionaty.org but could not move further because the bandwidth limit had exceeded.

Please take note of this information. Otherwise, you may think it’s an irrelevant point and not worth addressing.

Bandwidth is exceeded
Bandwidth is exceeded

It is crucial to select the right type of hosting service based on the traffic demands of your website, such as shared hosting, reseller hosting, VPS, cloud hosting, or dedicated server.

With the add-on features like site backup, priority support, privacy protection, and security features like SSL certificate, your purchase becomes even more valuable.

Among the optional features include marketing services, advertisement packages (Google Ads credit or Microsoft Ads credit), website builder, and e-commerce builder tools.

Features like the latest software package, CDN, network speed, and ultrafast hardware are also essential. However, people rarely consider these things, especially beginners.

The extra features and add-ons may be free or cost a few bucks but worth having them. Research about that before buying a web hosting service.

2. Reputation and Customer Reviews

Look for the reputation and dependability of the web hosting provider before purchasing a hosting plan.

Some companies provide cheap hosting solutions with unlimited storage and bandwidth but lack other essential features like high server uptime, a strong technical team, and advanced hardware.

It is better to check the market reputation of that particular hosting company.

Ask reviews from other customers using the same hosting or browse the top online review portals.

HostArmada Trustpilot Ratings
HostArmada Trustpilot Ratings

The reviews may vary for different hosting companies, but a good web hosting company always try to achieve 100% customer satisfaction.

3. Technical Support

The poor customer support sucks. Some hosting companies provide 24/7/365 true customer support, and it’s very important.

Most people don’t know the technical aspects of hosting and its insights or functionalities. For new people, it is like a big crisis.

So proper and qualified customer support with vast knowledge in this is essential.

Some companies may outsource the customer support department, and it may take time to resolve your issue.

Check the possible lines to connect; the toll-free call, live chat, email, and support tickets.

If social media interaction is available, then it will add a clear advantage over the rest.

The faster response time and the effectiveness of the solution are equally important to the above-mentioned points.

E.g., ChemiCloud provides excellent live chat support with less than 30 seconds of waiting time while some companies still rely on emails and support tickets for technical support communication.

4. Control Panel UI

Considering that not everyone on the internet is knowledgeable about web design, web management, or content management systems, the most important aspect of the admin panel is whether or not it is easy to navigate.

The control panel’s intuitive structure and streamlined interface follow more reputation.

It simplifies the process of managing web hosting accounts and stats for new users.

Good web hosting companies provide one-click CMS installation, SSL installation, FTP access, automatic backups and restores wizard, easier email management, and many other built-in features.

They keep making it better and better.

It enables users to modify their websites quickly and easily.

5. Email service

Some web hosting companies provide limited email accounts and mailbox storage, while others offer unlimited email accounts and space.

Pick the best service based on your preferences, and ensure your email account stays spam-free.

In addition, check if your email service includes protection against viruses, malware, and other threats.

Ask your doubts before purchasing the hosting plan, or simply Google it if you are unsure.

6. Server Uptime

Almost every company claims an uptime guarantee of over 99%.

What if it turns out to be a false promise?

You should check it out.

The server uptime reliability is critical for any website. Investing in web hosting is pointless if the server is frequently down or responds slowly.

Before buying hosting services, you need to check the uptime reliability. You may end up regretting your decision otherwise.

While 100% server uptime isn’t possible, it should be at least 99.9%.

7. Focused Area

You would be better off looking for specific areas in which the web hosting company excels. Every company has its pros and cons. Therefore, selecting the right web hosting requires extensive research.

Shared hosting can host a small website or blog with traffic below 100K per month.

You need additional features like a powerful server with dedicated resources, managed security, and responsive customer service if you want to host a business website.

Some companies focus on speed, while others focus on customer service. Select the web hosting provider that best suits your needs.

Most importantly, stay away from companies that focus exclusively on marketing instead of quality.

8. Future Upgrades

You must always check for upgrade plans before buying the web hosting plan.

If you are confident about your traffic generation strategies, it is better to go with future-proof solutions.

Ensure your hosting provider provides scalability so that you can add more server resources and additional functionalities in the future.

Lastly, find out the cost of server upgrades, if one is required.

9. Server Hardware

Reputable hosting companies use advanced hardware on their servers, including high-frequency CPU and ultrafast NVME SSD storage.

Cheap web hosting companies may not have the latest hardware.

As a result, your website may experience slower response times and may undergo periodic overhauls.

Additionally, outdated hardware can also cause server downtime problems that you never want.

Recently, some companies started using green energy and eco-friendly practices to reduce their carbon footprint. Such practices make us proud to be customers of these web-hosting companies.

10. Speed

Speed is a crucial factor while selecting a web hosting service.

Slow servers will cause visitors to leave your site quickly which will affect the conversion rate and increase bounce rates.

Please note that the website speed greatly depends on the server hardware, geographical location of the server (latency), and web technologies. 

You can test speed for the sites hosted on a particular server using page speed test tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix.

11. Price

Pricing also plays a major role in purchasing a web-hosting service.

New people prefer cheap hosting plans because they don’t know the site’s hosting requirements properly.

As your site grows, it requires more server resources to achieve stable performance.

Don’t cut corners on web hosting quality just to save a few bucks when you want to turn your blog into a career or start your own online business.

It will save a few bucks in the short term but may cost a big if something goes wrong.

You must be aware of the TOS of the web hosting company regarding account suspension, server usage, limitations in the specific field like speed, bandwidth according to plan.

It’s also better to check whether the company is giving a 100% money-back guarantee or not. Investigate all these points before buying a web-hosting service.

Don’t worry if you haven’t purchased web hosting for your blog or website. 

Several reputable web hosting companies offer attractive deals on their hosting plans.

So you can easily get big discounts

I suggest you select a perfect web hosting plan after studying all the above points. 

Although you will need to pay an extra $1-2 per month compared to regular hosting service, you’ll experience a noticeable difference in performance.

For under $5 per month, HostArmada is a great option if you’re looking for an affordable web host.

Cloudways and Rocket.net are other good web hosting options if budget isn’t a concern for you.

Wrap Up

I have shared every possible point on how to choose a web hosting service.

You’ve learned the basics of how to choose a web hosting provider. Still, it is advisable to be very careful when purchasing a web hosting plan.

Please comment below if I missed something or if you have suggestions for me.

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1 thought on “How to Choose a Web Hosting Service: An Ultimate Guide”

  1. Thanks for sharing this information. I didn’t think it was at all necessary to have a dedicated server. I will definitely look into VPS and cloud hosting though. Good thing I came across this ultra fast wordpress hosting service. I’m hoping it will help my website speed up. I have been looking for a good web hosting service for a while now and this seems to be the best option.

    Reply

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