
Most businesses are beginning to see how keenly important a great website is to their business.
But in the process of building the website many payless attentions to crucial factors like partnering with the reliable web hosting company, the focus mainly on designing the website.
Selecting the right web hosting company for your website will help ensure you’re building on a reliable server infrastructure with security parameters in place.
Rushing to host your business website anywhere without proper consideration other than looking at the cheapness can have a catastrophic effect on your web presence in the future.
We’d try to highlight some salient features you can look out for when picking the right web hosting company.
What is web hosting?
Web hosting is a rented internet server space for the purpose of hosting a website’s files. Without web hosting, it’s impossible for the website to become accessible on a global scale.
The server is where your website’s content such as the web’s code base, web images, videos, infographics, pictures, and text are served from.
We advocate picking a web hosting company that ticks all reliability pointers and offers other business-friendly enhancements. Such as speedy loading servers, malware scanner, zero spam for email boxes, DDoS protection and others that can tune up the overall experiences of web users.
Making the wrong hosting choice
A lot of companies will try to sell you on the cheapest or most expensive hosting. This isn’t because they think that’s what your best option is, but rather it’s their way of trying to get as much money out of you as possible. Without really caring about whether this is a commitment that you’re going to stick with for a long time.
This is why it’s so important to put a lot of thought into this decision and make sure you’re going with the hosting company that will work best for your needs.
Businesses that make the wrong choice in picking a web hosting company often experience these horrible things:
- SEO strategy is impaired negatively
- The site is down
- The site can’t handle the traffic, and it crashes or slows to a crawl
- Website content doesn’t load properly
- The content becomes inaccessible to visitors, search engines, etc.
- Performance of the website suffers as time goes on (page loads become slower)
- Customer service experience suffers because they are understaffed or unable to keep up with the volume of requests
- The site is hacked more often or comprised
- Malware attacks
- Loss of revenue
One could argue that a hosting company is like an insurance policy. You don’t want to pay for something you’re never going to use, but when you need it – and this usually happens in moments of crisis – they are invaluable.
Let’s proceed to consider the 10 qualities to look out for when choosing your next web host so you don’t get stuck with a bad choice!
Tips to choose a web hosting service?
We have compiled a few tips and factors to consider when picking a web hosting partner for your business website in Nigeria. You can eliminate any form of risk to your business if you adhere to these factors when deciding the ideal web hosting company.
Evaluate your hosting need
The starting point when looking for a web hosting company is to evaluate the current hosting needs of your business; answer the question of how minimal or intense is the resources needed at a time.
When you have a clear checklist of all the requirements for hosting your website, it becomes easier to find the right web hosting companies that offer the features and solutions that meet your business needs.
For example, if your proposed website will have only a few pages (10 to 20 pages) and less than a hundred images, you might be fine with a 5 GB shared hosting package, compared to an e-commerce business with thousands of product images.
The latter will require more hosting resources and features than the former.
In essence, go for a web hosting that can professionally cater to your hosting resources and traffic demands.
Pick the right web hosting plan
Once you’ve determined your hosting requirements, the next step is to choose the right web hosting package. While shared hosting plans are designed to save you costs as a small business, it’s important to know that no two shared hosting plans are the same. Before ordering a plan, check the hosting plan details and see what’s included in the technical offer of the plan.
ThriveHost server technology
For example, ThriveHost offers a minimum of 50 GB stellar SSD storage on their basic shared hosting plan. With all-inclusive features such as unlimited bandwidth to handle peak traffic, unlimited inodes, free SSL, a malware scanner feature, and spam-free corporate email boxes to handle your business communication with customers and prospects.
More interestingly, their shared hosting plans are built on autoscaling cloud solutions so that your website on their shared server is equipped with the right amount of resources required per time. This is one feature you can hardly get anywhere else with Nigerian web hosting solutions.
All the plans also come with timeline backups, which are done every day. It’s a fallback copy of your website available with one click in case you need to restore a complete copy of your website at any point.
They also offer free malware scanners and WP checksum that checks your version of the WordPress CMS against the official version to ensure that your website is free from malicious activities.
Other amazing features are rock-solid uptime, Google DNS, fast server response time from optimized PHP code base and a built-in global CDN that caches your content in multiple data centers across the globe.
If you are looking for a web host with an unmatched server structure built on redundant internet technology and resilient network, then ThriveHost is your most reliable pick.
More features of ThriveHost
- Dual 12 core Intel Xeon hyper threading Dell web servers with 48 logical cores.
- Offsite data backup for extra layer of protection
- Samsung enterprise SSDs
- High-level data center security protocols
- IPv6 and HTTPS/2 network protocol
- Knowledgeable technical support
Customer Support
Having fast and reliable customer support is crucial when it comes to website hosting companies because there will always be something wrong with your website. A good host is always responsive and solves your problems efficiently.
Customer service matters! Some companies offer phone numbers and live chat options all day long, while others offer support via email. It’s also important to see how well the customer service department communicates with its customers.
Transparent Pricing
Price is a big factor to consider when choosing your web hosting company; it will be the determining factor in what type of website you can host with them. There are different packages and prices for each service provider, but most reputable providers offer competitive pricing that allows businesses to get the best features at an affordable price.
Robust Technology
Another important factor to look out for is the robustness and speed of their technology. You want to find a company that has top-notch servers, fast connection speeds, and server stability so your website runs quickly for all visitors without any disruptions in service or downtime.
Secure server locations – another important factor to any business is the security of their website.
Corporate Email
Hosting a business website usually means you’ll need to include an email system on your site. A good Webhosting company will offer not only corporate email but also mobile and desktop apps for your employees to access their mail from anywhere.
Storage Space
Another important factor when choosing the best hosting company is storage space. You want enough room for your site’s files and a little extra for some growth
Site Speed
Who doesn’t want their website to load as quickly as possible? The best hosting company will offer faster servers with advanced caching so that each page loads in milliseconds
Free SSL Certificate
You’ll need an SSL certificate if you plan on accepting payments online or storing customer details. A good web hosting company will offer not only a free SSL certificate but also make it possible to purchase ones with better coverage from an outside vendor.
Content Delivery Network
ThriveHost is a great example of this with a built-in CDN solution, so you do not need to install Cloudflare or any other CDN services, and you get it for free as long as you’re a customer with them. Interesting, Isn’t it?
User-friendly Admin Panel
Who wants to have to navigate through dozens of tabs and windows just to change their email settings? With a good hosting company, you’ll be able to access everything from one place with an intuitive interface
Website migration
You’re going to need time set aside for transferring your site over before the date of your domain expiration, and the best hosting company will offer you a free website migration as part of their service.
Domain Registration
This one is a bit of an obvious point, but if you’re not paying for your domain name it’s worth mentioning. If the company doesn’t offer this as part of their service when they agree to host your website, then you might want to keep looking. Even if you don’t get the domain free, the hosting company must be able to provide you an avenue to purchase your domain and seamlessly integrate it with your hosting without any issues.
24/7/365 Expert technical support
They may not be able to fix your site for you, but they should have a team of experts on hand 24/hours per day.
Easy setup process
If the hosting company’s whole service is based around having an easy way to set up and manage websites, then this needn’t be mentioned at all. However, if it isn’t, then you should be able to tell from the website how easy it will be and if they offer any “installation” services.
If you are planning to take your business online sooner or later, you don’t want to make the wrong decision of picking the wrong hosting company. A good hosting company will help you to alleviate a lot of the stress involved in running a small business online.
In a nutshell, A good web hosting company should be reliable, have transparent pricing, and give just-in-time support to their customers.