Businesses know how important having a website that is appealing to their target audience is, but something they might overlook is how or where they plan to host their website. The process of choosing how and where your business’s website will be hosted is crucial. First and foremost, you will need to decide if you will host your website internally or if you plan to partner with a website hosting company. Partnering with a reliable web hosting company such as TechArk Solutions, located in Norfolk VA, ensures your website is always secure and easily accessible to your target audience. Below we will share some tips for finding the perfect web hosting partner for your business.
What Kind of Web Host Does Your Business Needs
The type of web hosting company your business will need is directly correlated to the type of website your business has or is planning to develop. If your website will employ complex design elements such as allowing users to upload media, your site will require more website hosting features than a business that just uses their website as an online business card. Similarly, a website that receives a large amount of traffic daily will not perform as well on a shared hosting server as it would on a private hosting server where it will not have to share bandwidth with any other website. When choosing a hosting provider, take into consideration your current website and future goals to help determine which type of hosting provider will best suit your business.
Leave Room for Growth
If your business’s website is new, it probably does not require a lot of bandwidth at this time. That being said, it might seem like choosing a shared hosting provider would be the most cost effective option. While that may be true for the moment, you will need to leave room in your bandwidth for the growth your website and ultimately your business will experience. When choosing a hosting partner, make sure they do not lock your company into a specific bandwidth bracket or charge you additional fees for having to modify your hosting package in the future.
Choosing the Perfect Package
As mentioned above, many businesses choose a shared hosting package as a way to cut costs. While the lower price point may be attractive, choosing to be on a shared package risks your business’s website having slow response times. If your website takes too long to load, it can cause users to leave your site without engaging. Utilizing a private package from a website hosting provider is slightly more expensive, but ensures a fast, high-quality user experience on your business’s website.
Understand the Backup Plan
The reason your website is down is not always the most important thing. Your first priority should be getting your website back up and running as soon as possible. Every website hosting agency should be able to provide a detailed backup plan for when the unthinkable happens. If you do not find the agency’s plan satisfactory, they might not be the best partner for you.
Inquire about Security Options
Thousands of security breaches occur every day. A website hosting agency has several main functions, one of them is providing a secure place to house your website and collect your customer’s information. If a provider cannot or does not offer features to ensure your website is secure, they probably aren’t the best fit for your business.
Price isn’t Everything
Whether your business is just starting out or it has been around a while, we know that most companies have a limited budget. When looking for a web hosting company it can be tempting to choose the one that is the most inexpensive. It is important to keep in mind that you get what you pay for. If a website hosting provider’s options are significantly less expensive than competitors, there’s a good chance that they do not offer all the features you may need, they may not have the best customer service or they may experience a lot of downtimes.
Read Reviews
Last and certainly not least, reading the reviews and testimonials from other customers can give you a great understanding of a web hosting company and whether or not partnering with them would be a good fit for your business. By reading reviews, you will be able to see any trends of consistent issues and complaints that clients have experienced when working with this specific provider. Take note of how the hosting company responds to reviews, especially bad ones.
Conclusion
When creating a website for your business, the first step of the process is determining where that website will be hosted. Businesses can choose to host their website internally or to partner with an organization that specializes in hosting websites. There are a lot of factors that come into play when choosing a website hosting provider some of which include available features, responsiveness, reliability and security. TechArk Solutions, located in Norfolk VA, hosts, designs, develops and maintains websites for dozens of businesses located throughout the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. If your business is in need of a reliable hosting agency for your business’s website, contact TechArk today.
