Checklist for New Businesses Looking for Affordable Web Hosting
How Does Website Hosting Work?
Every website you visit needs to be hosted on a server, which determines the hard drive storage space, bandwidth and RAM allocated. In effect, web hosting is buying or renting space on a server to provide a 'home' for your website.
The server stores all of the data that goes into your web pages, such as:
- Product pages
- Videos and graphics
- Tools and features
Web hosting services and costs vary considerably because there is a big difference between a basic blog hosting package and an all-singing ecommerce hosting package that supports thousands of daily transactions.
Types of Business Website Hosting
Please note that this isn't an exhaustive list, and you may need another type of hosting or a blended package to cover your other IT infrastructure needs!
Shared Hosting
Hosting on a shared server is ideal for small websites that don't need buckets of capacity and want to prioritise cost savings.
Dedicated Server Hosting
Provided your web traffic is high enough to warrant the expense, you can achieve excellent reliability and web speed performance and make changes to the configuration as and when you wish.
Virtual Private Servers
VPS hosting is the next level from shared hosting, created for medium-sized organisations that need more space than a shared web host but don't need as much power as a dedicated service.
The middle ground is best for business websites that want to compromise between cost and customisation, with each user's site kept separate and isolated from the next.
New Business Web Hosting Checklist
For example, if you have an interactive website, say a retail site or an event hosting site, where visitors are encouraged to sign up and submit payment details, security encryption will be a significant focus to safeguard user information.
1. Web Hosting Speed
Most companies use a two-second loading time as a threshold - any longer, and your web hosting service is not fast enough.
2. Bandwidth and Storage
We normally suggest looking for web hosting from 10 GB a month to build in a little capacity cushion.
3. Website Security
Good quality web hosting includes a raft of security features and tools, with adjustable settings to ensure your servers are safeguarded from bots and hackers.
4. Uptime
If you find that your new website is always down or dropping out, it might be time to upgrade to a more dependable hosting option.
5. Data Backups
Business web hosting plans often include automatic backups, which are highly preferred since they mean you don't need to schedule a backup manually and won't risk losing everything without the option to restore.
6. Web Hosting Support Desk
Technical support can be invaluable if something goes wrong - a web hosting provider with a 24/7 support line or support ticket system is a good contender because you can call for help if your website starts to experience problems.
7. Control Panel
User-friendly, jargon-free control panels (also called cPanels) are a must for new businesses that may wish to create new email addresses or change passwords, for example.
8. Website Content Management
Hosting services could include a web builder or might have a content management system (CMS) attached, with plenty of click-and-drop options, so you don't need to be a web developer to use them.
9. Email Addresses
If you don't yet have a set of business email accounts, it's worth looking for web hosting that allows you to set up email addresses with the same domain name as your website.
Professional business email contacts look more trustworthy than a generic Gmail or Outlook address, particularly if you ask customers to contact you through your website.
For example, you could use ABC.com as a domain name and pay for web hosting that includes up to ten email addresses formatted as name@ABC.com.
10. Upgrade Options
Finally, as a new business, there is every chance that in a year or two, your website will have grown, or your traffic will increase, and a web hosting service has become unsuitable for the capacity required.
Web hosting that offers you upgrade options can be beneficial because you won't have the hassle of cancelling one hosting service to switch to another or finding an affordable web host with the bandwidth and speeds you need.
Upgrading through one provider is far easier because you can switch to a different plan without changing your website, domain or online data.
Choosing the Best Web Hosting for New Businesses
We hope this checklist has given you a good idea of what to look for from a web hosting service and which factors to keep as a top priority!
For more help selecting a competitive web host for a new business site, please visit the Best10 review pages for independent rankings, discount codes and advice.Web hosting services are an important element of running a small business website. You're paying for the server space your provider uses to store the files required to keep your website up and running.
There are thousands of web hosting services and pricing packages, but the hosting you need depends on the size of your website, the volume of traffic you need to accommodate and the types of hosting services available.
Best10 has collated this checklist to run through all the essentials you should prioritise when picking a web hosting package for your new business website and some of the pros and cons to keep an eye out for.
