What is a web hosting provider?
Say you are an entrepreneur or an organization. You need to take the next step in establishing yourself or your brand online. In order to do this, you need to create a website or web page that is later hosted on the internet. A web hoster’s job is to support you in bringing your website in front of the viewers. Simply put, they help you with their technologies and services that help you to be visible on the internet.
After a website is hosted, it is stored on computer servers. When someone needs to reach your website, all they have to do is type in your website address or domain name. From the servers, users receive your web pages through whatever browser they use.
Even if you don’t have a domain, web hosting providers will help you purchase the most suitable one for your website.
Are you trying to host your website? But can’t quite figure out where to start? Then you are in luck. Because in this article we are going to discuss how to choose the ideal web hosting provider for you. Do they have what it takes to fulfill your necessities? Let’s talk.
How can you choose the correct web hosting provider?
Even though there are many web hosting providers out there, it is essential to find a service that promises 100% effectiveness. According to hostingfacts.com, they have listed 10 best web hosting providers comparing their performance. Bluehost.com is their first choice. According to their data, Bluehost.com is one of the best web hosting services out there.
Bluehost was founded in 2003 and since then, they have been attempting to provide the best solutions for their customers. Their main mission is to fully equip people to succeed on the web. Their web hosting packages were provided to thousands of people and more than 2 million websites are powered by them. With a dedicated team consisting of over 750 members they are currently living up to the customer expectations. It has partnered up with WordPress for over 10 years.
Now let’s see how a web hosting company could become relevant in their field for a longer period of time.
What essential traits should a great web hosting provider have?
1. Uptime and Speed
Uptime can be considered as one of the most important well factors your web hosting provider should have. Uptime is a sort of measurement to identify how long your website is available to your visitors. Simply put, your visitors should be provided with your web pages any time they need it. The uptime should be 100%. However, this perfection is not quite possible. So, finding a web hosting provider that promises an Uptime percentage somewhere closer to 100% is crucial.
Great Web hosting companies usually have strategies to save the Uptime when something unwanted happens.
For instance, promising companies have more than one server for your website in their data center. Basically what this does is, if the server goes down, a duplicate server is ready to kick in to avoid the Uptime interruption.
Another good factor is, having multiple duplicate servers in different locations. This prevents the possibilities of your website not being up and keeps it available even if a natural disaster occurs.
For example, Bluehost guarantees 99.99% Uptime which is outstanding. According to hostingfacts.com, their test site’s Uptime never dropped below 99.96% for 24 months.
The other main point is Speed. If a website loads and functions slowly it is possible that your leads will drop their attempt to connect with you. Nobody wants a slow website. Your potential customers will appreciate a fast loading site.
Various studies show that slow websites translate fewer sales. Your visibility on the search results will be increased or decreased depending on your site’s speed.
Great web hosting providers use caching for a part of your website without loading it every time by the server. This makes the website fast as well.
Monitoring Bluehost’s site speed since 2018, hostingfacts.com has discovered it as the 5th fastest site out of all the other services out there. Bluehost’s average page loading speed is at 405ms.
2. Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity is a fundamental aspect of any business because the attack rate is growing rapidly. Pre-eminent web hosting companies will protect your website from these threats with Automated malware scans, CloudFlare integration which is a great security solution and Firewall management.
A great example is Bluehost.com security.
They offer a free SSL certificate for every plan they are involved with. With this, your credit card transactions, data transfer, and logins will be safe.
The domain privacy feature they offer helps you to secure your personal data. Having this type of security prevents hackers from gaining access to sensitive information and lure you or your customers into tricks.
As mentioned before, the SiteLock feature by Bluehost is there to fight malware attacks. This is usually a common feature for WordPress sites.
In case your site gets hacked, you can recover the previous version of your site by the CodeGuard. This feature provides daily backups.
When you use E-mail, nothing suspicious comes into your inbox with Postini, by Google.
3. Customer Support
Customer support can be quite a frustrating area for anyone who owns a business. With that being said, a good web hosting provider will take care of the hard work for you. For instance, they will offer you a top-notch system to resolve tickets by their staff.
Another feature should be Live support. Your customers will definitely appreciate talking to a live person who can resolve their problems.
Priority support is another great option that should be provided by your web hosting provider. This enables the customers to pay for priority support in order to get their ticket to the top of the issues.
If there is a way to find an answer yourself to a problem that needs solving is a great opportunity. This way telephone conversations decrease. Therefore, having a Knowledge database and tutorials is beneficial.
Considering Bluehost, they have an amazing customer support system. Their live chat literally connects with the customers within 2 minutes. Their staff is absolutely friendly as well. Their customer support offers direct answers to every question you have which is very good because not having direct responses can be exhausting.
4. Features they offer
The bottom line is, no matter how fancy your web hosting provider is, they should have a lot of integrations in their hands. If the service you are offered is not up to par, then it is a waste of time and investment.
For instance, Bluehost undoubtedly will create you a novel, modern, and 100% mobile-friendly website.
They also fully optimize your new website to rank on the top of the search engine results. Keyword placement is a huge part of this process.
They will make sure to increase your visibility on Google, Yelp, Yahoo, etc. Not to mention Bluehost will make a constant effort to spread the word about your website on social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and website blog articles.
You can also purchase a domain manager from them to manage multiple domains at the same time. You are allowed to set backups daily, weekly, or monthly.
Being partnered up with WordPress allows you to install it just like that. You also have the liberty of choosing and installing various content management systems (CMS) such as Drupal, Joomla or run an e-commerce shop.
Another cool feature is including a CDN or Content Delivery Network. This is a huge portion of making your website faster. Basically, this service delivers your images and large files to the visitors super fast. This takes out a heavy load from your servers.
Content Delivery Network also enables High reliability and uptime. The cost for bandwidth becomes less with a CDN which is easy to scale.
Bluehost generates analytics for you to see how your website is doing with the traffic and you can get weekly reports of SEO keywords.
Last but not least, when you choose a web hosting partner, it should be User-friendly. Most of the web hosts are only there for advanced users.
If you are a non-technical person, a host without a user-friendly interface is a waste of time. For instance, LiquidWeb is ideal for pro users.
Bluehost, on the other hand, offers a very easy control panel which you can handle with the least amount of expertise. If you are still not comfortable, try tweaking a template for your requirements.
5. WordPress.org Recommended
WordPress is a well-known website platform all around the world. It is impossible to find somebody who is unaware of the platform.
They officially recommend only 3 hosting partners to create a WordPress site. Of course, the number is pretty low, however, you can understand why WordPress is picky with the web hosting providers. Simply, they need to provide you the best.
The official recommended hosting partners are Bluehost, Dreamhost, and SiteGround.
WordPress.org has been recommending Bluehost for quite some time now. More than 10 years of partnership, has led to this trust. Since 2005 Bluehost has been recommended by WordPress.org.
Because of the steady partnership, customers will receive various useful plugins, attractive themes, and seamless 3rd party integrations.
The themes are rather appealing that are available to choose from a vast collection. All you need to do is, choose the correct and the best fitting theme for your brand and business. The theme is everything when it comes to representing your brand.
Moreover, you can try out the themes easily by switching back and forth.
If you need to build your WordPress website from the best hosting partner then Bluehost should be your number one choice.
6. Affordability
Let’s cut to the chase. No matter how good a service is, if we cannot afford that service, it’s difficult to continue. That’s why we always need to conduct our own research on the best web hosting providers out there.
The question is, how much does it cost, and is it cost-effective?
You can check out Bluehost’s full pricings if you take a quick look at their website. Initially, their lowest price was $7.99 per month.
However, they have taken down the price even more now. It is now advertised as $3.95 per month.
Nevertheless, the real issue is having the needed essential package for that cost. For this price, Bluehost provides you with 50 GB SSD storage, unmetered bandwidth, and a free SSL certificate and a lot more. You basically get everything you need to build an appealing and modern website with their plans.
Needless to say, their Uptime and Speed is a huge yes for people out there. So, long story short, Bluehost is very cost-effective and you won’t be disappointed. According to hostingfacts.com studies, this is the lowest rate out there that actually equips their customers with everything they need.
The final decision is completely up to you. This is why there should be a 30-day money-back guarantee. And, Bluehost has one for their plans.
In case you sign up with them, start using their services, and are not fully satisfied, you can get a refund.
Obviously, if you have purchased domains or other add-ons their cost will be deducted when they refund except the web-hosting cost.
If you have received a free domain name when you purchased the plan, then a $15.99 fee will be deducted. Make a request within 30 days to avoid disappointments.
You need to be mindful of any web hosting company’s terms and policies before signing up with them.
To Conclude..
There are plenty of web hosting companies out there you can choose from. In fact, they offer a lot for the people who are trying to get their websites hosted.
Although there are many things to be considered, the above-mentioned traits are some of the key points you should take into account before choosing the perfect web hosting provider for you.
But the problem is, there’s always something lacking for some customers. Therefore, the best option is to contact your web hosting partner you wish to work with and get a thorough understanding of their services.
Before going the extra mile, research and find out what is the best-suited provider for your goals.
So whether you decide to go with BlueHost or another hosting provider of your choice, we 100% recommend you pull out all the stops and take your time and choose wisely.
Do you have any tricks up your sleeves for choosing web hosting providers? If so, we’d love to hear about them!
Reach out to us on Facebook or Twitter and let us know what works for you.
REFERENCES
- https://www.website.com/beginnerguide/webhosting/6/1/what-is-web-hosting?.ws
- https://smallbiztrends.com/2015/11/good-web-hosting-company.html
- https://hostingfacts.com/
- https://hostingfacts.com/hosting-reviews/bluehost/
- https://www.globalsign.com/en/ssl-information-center/what-is-an-ssl-certificate
- https://hostingfacts.com/best-cdn-providers/
