Businesses are doing everything to have an online presence since there is a shift from brick-and-mortar stores to online shopping. Websites are the main way through which companies establish that presence. The sites need to be hosted, and this is where web hosting providers come in.
If you are unfamiliar or new to the web hosting stuff, you will get pieces of advice from all corners on the way to go about getting a reliable service provider. That way, you can have peace of mind that your website will up and running at least 99% of the time.
Here are some mistakes you need to steer away from as you choose a web host:
Going for Free Hosting Services
While free hosting services may seem a great deal initially and are good enough for personal blogs and hobby sites, they are a bad choice for business websites. You may not know as you start with free hosting, but most of them thrive on having banners and pop-ups on your site, giving a bad customer experience.
Moreover, search engines impose punitive measures to websites residing on free hosting services resulting in low traffic to your website. On top of the low traffic, free hosting ranks poorly when it comes to speed, uptime, availability, and reliability.
At worst, you could wake up to find they closed shop, and your site is gone for good. And you have no claim from the host since it was not a paid service. If you have a tight budget, it is better to use a low-cost hosting service than a free-hosting service.
Choosing the Provider Based on Price Only
Indeed, cheap products are often inferior, but it is not always true that the costly ones are superior. So what is the way out in this matter? It would help if you based your choice on more factors besides the price. While most cheap service providers scrimp on critical things like speed, infrastructure, customer support, and storage to offer low prices, a few offer great service.
Also, some costly providers only use jargon for marketing their services but provide poor service. As you pick your web-host, think of where you want your website to be in a given period and choose the provider to help you get there by offering all that you need.
Not testing the Support Team’s Reliability
You will most probably have to call your web host company’s customer support over one issue or another during your time of working with them. If they have poor service, you will have to grapple with your site alone. As such, always test your prospective web hosting provider’s customer support before awarding them the business.