Know Your Hosting Needs for Beginners
Everyone talks about website redesigns, but no one thinks about the hosting needs of sophisticated websites, especially at the enterprise level. There are so many web hosting services available online today that when it comes to choosing the right one to suit your site's needs, it can often leave you feeling overwhelmed. You can usually find advertising for free hosting, shared hosting, dedicated hosting, and cloud hosting.
In an attempt to not overwhelm the ones with limited hosting knowledge, today I'm going to list 4 of the of the most important features that need to be considered important when it comes to your website's hosting needs.
SECURITY
Who doesn't want a safe website? The best hosting providers should have a secure infrastructure. Never compromise your website's security for cheap hosting. Be sure to check to see if the hosting provider offers site monitoring, authentication, and immediate response to site vulnerabilities.
PERFORMANCE
No one wants a slow website, especially for their visitor experience. Speed and SEO matters a lot to Google, so much so, that they take page speed very seriously when determining how well your website ranks in search engines. When considering a hosting provider, consider how well they perform in industry/competitor benchmarks.
SUPPORT
You want support to be available for you when you need it, not for when they are available. When looking for a hosting provider, be sure they offer support tickets with a fast response time. Some even offer online live chat support. Also, make sure there is a knowledge-base accessible for the easy and frequently asked questions.
Elasticity or Scalability
What kind of website do you have? Knowing the kind of website you have will determine which hosting provider you choose.
Should your website need, people to subscribe to the website for services similar to Netflix or Dropbox, then you will need your hosting provider to have elasticity. In the simplest way, I can describe this feature is that if you have subscribers that you have no control of how many sign up, then you need a hosting provider that increase capacity and server use automatically.
Scalability, on the other hand, is for a business who anticipates website growth, and it is planned. For example, say that your website is a simple website with say 500 or fewer user. Now, say that in the next 6-months, you plan to add a new section or several sections to your website which you anticipate will bring in 100 to 200 more users, in this case, a hosting provider that offers easy scalability, then you can increase the size and decrease the size when you need to.
Scalability is much more precise and timely than elasticity, and it is controlled by you and your provider. Elasticity usually only applies to e-commerce sites, mobile and web development; and SaaS platform companies.
Now that you know a little more about hosting a website, you can now approach a web design agency with a little more confidence and knowledge of what you need for your website. Most agencies, like ours, will have multiple hosting platforms they prefer to use and will always help you make the best decision.
