Are you looking for a quality web hosting provider for your domain, but don’t know which one to decide on? We are here to help you choose the best web hosting for your project! From price to hosting features and free domain registration. In order for you to have your website running smoothly, you will need the best hosting provider, which guarantees a good uptime, fast load times, and a simple configuration.
Choosing the right hosting is not a decision that you have to take lightly, you will have to consider your needs in-depth and not go for the first offer, for this it is very important that you study the advantages offered by one or another provider. It may seem tedious to you, but do not worry, today I will tell you everything you need to know so that you can choose without making a mistake.
Before deciding to contract a service avoid headaches, it is important that you know well what you are acquiring, as some say “to make a good purchase you must be well informed”. We tell you the details about web hosting and all the factors that go into making a good choice.
What is a Web Hosting and what is it for?
Web Hosting, also known as web storage or Webhosting, is the physical space that you rent on a server to store all the information on your website (images, forms, templates, themes, posts) and that according to the plan you hire, You will have different resources from this server so that you can have your website visible on the internet.
What is the difference between domain and Web Hosting?
When we talk about hosting we refer to the physical space in which you store all the information on your website, if we talk about the domain it would be the name that you assign to your website, for example, “postdune.com”, a domain would be like the DNI of your website. Domains are unique in the world, that is, there cannot be two websites with the same domain name.
Should I choose a free Web Hosting?
Definitely not. Free hosting is useful for a test environment, that is, you can use free hosting to learn and experiment with real web hosting, but if you have a serious and professional project, you should have a budget for quality hosting.
It is worth mentioning that today you can find professional and quality hosting services from $ 5 per month on average.
With free hosting, by accepting the terms and conditions of the service, you are authorizing the provider to insert unpaid advertising on your website, in addition to giving you minimal server resources (very slow website) and, last but not least In these free storage services you will have zero technical support. So if you have any problems or doubts, God saves you.
How much does a hosting cost me?
If we talk about prices in web hosting services, hosting costs are usually entirely related to the quality of the service they offer you; the greater the resources, the greater the capacity and speed, the greater cost will be. However, all hostings usually offer you a 30-day guarantee, so if you are not a satisfied customer at that time, you can ask for your refund.
You can contract monthly plans ranging from $ 5 / month as well as you can choose annual plans ranging from $ 50 to $ 150 on average.
As you can see, the price will depend a lot on the profile of the hosting service and the costs vary considerably. So it is very important when starting an online project to learn the needs and focus of your project and based on this you can hire one or another hosting provider plan.
How to contract a Web Hosting?
Hiring a hosting really not something complex, since service that you can acquire through the internet, and regarding the renewal of the service, this is done monthly or annually, according to the plan you have chosen. The payment for the service is similar to the payment you make for your Netflix subscription.
The complexity in this decision lies in choosing the right hosting for the needs of your website, the acquisition process is quite simple:
- Go to the website of the hosting provider and follow the purchase instructions.
- You can pay for the service through credit or debit cards, and on some platforms, you can make the deposit through PayPal or other payment gateways, including cryptocurrencies.
Types of Web Hosting
When starting an online project, be it creating a website, an online store, or your personal blog, it is very important to know the different types of hosting that exist. Choosing one is not a decision that you have to take lightly. Like other types of services, web hosting has different modalities so you can choose the right hosting depending on your needs.
You can choose a cheap hosting or the most basic service, for personal or small projects, even choosing professional services that provide as many benefits as you may need. The important thing is that you know how to differentiate well so that you can choose the best hosting according to the needs of your online project.
Shared Hosting
In this type of hosting (shared hosting), different websites are hosted on the same server. Sharing resources from the same server as the CPU, processor, RAM, bandwidth between the different clients of the provider.
Dedicated server
They are computers that are used only to host the data of a single client, that is, your website would not be sharing resources with any other website. In addition, in these cases they offer complete access to the hardware and software of said server, allowing it to adapt its capabilities to the specific needs of each user.
This type of service is recommended for medium or corporate projects in which between 2K and 4K daily visits are registered. If this was your case and you still follow the basic plan, you should see the option to migrate your plan to this service.
VPS
VPS (Virtual Private Server) is another service that you can find from a web hosting provider. In a few words, a VPS server would be a hybrid system between shared hosting and dedicated server, since it consists of virtually dividing a physical server so that it can be used as multiple servers.
In this way, the user has almost the same features as a dedicated server, with some storage limitations, but other limitations compared to the dedicated server almost disappear. A VPS is recommended for websites that are around 2K to 3K visits per day.
Cloud Hosting
This type of hosting saves the data of your website in «the cloud». To give you an idea, the cloud is a storage technique that uses a system of multiple servers geographically hosted in different places, so if one server fails there is no problem because there are other servers that come into action.
This service is suitable for websites that receive high traffic on a recurring basis and that need to be “forever” active and sites that do not want to compromise the security of their data as the probability that the site will stop working due to “technical server problems” »Is null, since if one fails, your website is automatically activated on another.
WordPress Hosting
WordPress today has become one of the most popular platforms for managing websites on the market, due to its ease and simplicity with which you can edit a website. WordPress is behind more than 35% of those in the world, figures that are growing every day. Everything from simple websites, blogs, complex portals, and corporate websites, even applications, are built with WordPress.
Thanks to this popularity, dedicated storage systems have been developed exclusively for these platforms. That is why there are hosting providers that offer services designed exclusively for this format with bandwidth settings designed for these sites.
Characteristics that a quality Web Hosting must have
It is very important that you know how to choose well from the best hosting providers since the good or bad performance of your website will depend on this. The human being by nature is impatient and it is statistically proven that 7 out of 10 users who visit a website abandon it if it does not load after 3 seconds, which translates into large losses of money for your business if you do not choose well. To choose the best hosting provider, start by considering the following factors:
Storage
It is the amount of space that is assigned to our website so that we can store the files that make up our website, the storage is measured in GB (Gigabyte), generally, a hosting can offer you plans from 10GB to unlimited space.
Bandwidth
Or band transfer, it would be the total internet data that your website can use (generally in monthly installments). Before hiring a hosting provider, you should evaluate your needs for disk space and bandwidth. If your site will have a lot of images, graphics, lots of pages, and a lot of traffic, you will need decent bandwidth and plenty of disk storage space.
Multisite
There will be cases in which you need to install a subdomain within your website, for example, if your domain is “yourdomain.com” and you wanted to have an online store independent of your domain, you could install a subdomain “store.yourdomain.com”.
In general, a quality hosting provider will offer you plans with a multi-site option, that is to say, that within the same administration panel you can add more than one website for the same plan that you have contracted.
Reliability (Up Time)
It really is one of the most important factors to consider when looking for a hosting provider, with this data, you can be sure that your page will be active 24/7. A professional pro hosting offers rates of 98 and 99% availability, also called “uptime”. A2 Hosting has one of the best uptime guarantees with 99.98%.
SSL security
Security is another important point that you have to take into account. An SSL certificate adds a nice S at the end of the http (https) indicating that it is a safe place to navigate since the data travels in an encrypted waypoint to point, it is said from the website to the user.
Speed
The speed or charging time is really important. We know that the human being is impatient by nature and if your website loads slowly many users will end up leaving the site, which will increase the bounce rate, damaging the SEO of your website. To keep users always active on your website, make sure that your hosting provider offers you a fast loading time. Personally, Digital Factory offers loading times of 260 ms for pages, personally one of the fastest hostings I have ever tested.
Auto Installer
A hosting that offers you auto-installer (Softaculous) or similar is something really useful and appreciated since it allows us to install any CMS such as WordPress or Prestashop with just a few clicks.
Technical support
What if you start to see your service fail and you have no one to help you fix it? It is very comfortable to have the immediate help of our supplier in these cases. Technical support refers to the different means of communication that your provider gives you to contact him.
Servers location
The number of servers and the location play an important role in the loading and service speed of your website. Obviously, the more servers that are available, the faster the service will be, but the location of those servers in the world will also affect quality. Find servers in locations close to the public you want to reach, such as UK, USA.