There are dozens of leading web hosts and hundreds if not thousands of generic, sub-par offshoots and lacking hosting providers. Knowing what to avoid and look out for amongst the plethora of hosting options is vital when creating a new website or blog. Choosing the right web host, one that’s capable of storing and transferring your content in a speedy and efficient manner, is a straightforward task that’s essential to the success of your website. Picking the right web host means you will have SEO benefits, around-the-clock uptime, and plenty of resources to help your site or blog to grow. By avoiding these 5 simple pitfalls of hosting, you’ll be sure to find the best home for your web content.
1. Free Website Hosting
While the word “free” is often enticing to new businesses and website owners, don’t be fooled by its charm when it comes to finding a home for your website. Free web hosts universally fail to provide reliable connections, sufficient uptime, adequate load speeds, and acceptable levels of administrator access to website owners.
Free web hosting is often used by scammers and other businesses, meaning the IP addresses and servers of these companies are often blacklisted by search engines, lowering the rankings of any content stored on them. Free hosting will also often involve placing other businesses ads on your site, for which you won’t be paid. Since web hosting can now be purchased for $5 a month, there is no reason to choose a free web host today. Free web hosts also tend to limit the software, Content Management Systems, themes and other content you can upload to their servers. If you’re going through the work of building a website, it’s worth paying a few bucks per month for proper hosting.
2. Failing to Inspect the Customer Service System
While looking for a professional hosting option, many new website owners focus strictly on the technical requirements of a website. Unlimited storage space and bandwidth are great features to find a host but without a good customer service system in place, you may find more aggravation than you’d expect. Check out review websites to analyze how good your potential host’s customer service record is before making any hosting purchases.
Another way to test current customer service response times and quality is to make an inquiry to the company’s customer service department before signing up. You can ask a simple question that elaborates on the F.A.Q. to simply determine response times or ask a tougher, tech-based question to see how capable the company’s service department is when it comes to handling issues you may face while running a website.
3. Hosts with Inadequate Resources
Customer service isn’t the only important difference among leading web hosts. Some popular hosts offer very limited and restricted plans, starting with just one Gigabyte of disc storage and enough bandwidth to serve less than 20,000 visitors per month. Look for unlimited or unmetered plans to avoid these potential issues that could arise as your website garners more traffic.
You will also want to avoid hosts that don’t offer bonus features like automated backups, easy installation of WordPress and other CMSs, and free installation of databases. Look for a host that allows you to create multiple subdomains and secondary domains if you plan on having more than one major section in your website, or multiple websites.
4. Hosts that Don’t Offer Bonus Features
Since hosting technology has become exponentially less expensive and more accessible in recent years, the market has turned to the buyer’s favor. Most web hosts are highly competitive and willing to provide bonus features with your hosting plan to earn your business. Look for hosts that offer point-and-click website builders, CMS-optimized plans, malware checking apps, and advanced user control panels.
One of the best bonus features you’ll find in a host is Search Engine Optimization. Good hosts know the importance of search engine rankings and configure their servers to help your website get ranked higher by search engines. Hosts with positive SEO factors often have strict rules against spam and questionable content, which will help protect your own website from being harmed by other sites using the same IP Block.
5. Unscrupulous Rebranded Hosting Providers
Sometimes hosting providers offer reseller hosting, which can be a profitable way to earn extra money while using hosting services. With a reseller-hosting plan, you can sign others up for web hosting under your own account and earn a kickback from the primary host. Sometimes the host will allow you to offer lower pricing than they advertise on their main website.
This can work out really well for the reseller and the third-party hosting purchasers but caution is needed as some resellers provide hosting from unscrupulous hosts. If you’re buying reseller-based hosting make sure it’s coming from an established, reputable company and not a free, fly-by-night web host that has sprung up recently on the web. Check with your reseller to see what kind of specifications and limitations are involved with your new hosting plan to make sure you’ll have enough storage and control to properly run your website.
Avoiding these 5 common mistakes people make when choosing a hosting provider will guarantee you have a satisfying hosting experience. Remember that free hosts aren’t worth the hassle, and to check out the customer service department and features of any professional host your considering. Make sure that your potential host allows multiple domains and unlimited storage if you plan to start more than one website in the future, and look for modern technologies and protocols like cloud hosting plans and unmetered bandwidth before making your decision.
Originally posted on April 9, 2018 @ 5:00 pm