The choice of the hosting provider is not an easy task, there are so many factors that should be considered. The diversity of web hosting providers is vast, and everyone offers a variety of plans with special bonuses and the lowest possible prices. In such circumstances, it might be extremely challenging to make the right decision, especially if you are new to this industry.
We decided to share 5 common mistakes that new clients usually make so you can avoid such traps.
Selecting free hosting services.
Probably, one of the most frequent mistakes for a variety of users is the focus on Virtual private server price. For new clients who haven’t had any previous experience with hosting services, try to select either the cheapest option or the free one is common.
Of course, free or extremely cheap options might suit simple blogs or websites where you share your hobby. However, businesses and even startups could have huge troubles in the long run. Except for the variety of advertising that you will have on such websites, search engines might usually penalize these platforms and that will directly influence traffic volumes.
Moreover, free hosting services have extremely low ratings when talking about reliability, speed, availability, uptime characteristics, and of course, ranking in the search engines. Also, users of such resources don’t have any guarantees, so you should not expect compensation. Most frequently, such free options are either scammers or providers that want to hook more users and then force them to pay for the expensive package.
Choosing the wrong hosting package.
Prior to the selection of the hosting provider, you should clearly understand your business requirements so you can select the most appropriate package. For the startups and individual usage, the most suitable variant is either VPS or shared package. Once your needs start growing, you can select a bigger plan, so scalability is crucial for the hosting solutions.
When searching the hosting provider, pay attention to the quick upgrade of the current plan. You can directly contact the support team and get all the details about the scalability or review the users’ feedback about the upgrades. Try to find out whether it is possible to easily scale from the shared to the VPS package or add additional storage/bandwidth.
When you start to have huge traffic volumes, you may decide to order a dedicated server so that your clients will have the best user experience. With the dedicated resources and full isolation of your server, you will definitely have better security.
Ignoring the limitations
One more important factor is the limitation of the storage, bandwidth, or other restrictions mentioned on the official website, but for some reason, you have missed this information. There are some providers with several restrictions according to the used resources and it might become a huge issue with the growing potential of your website.
Also, you should check whether there are some restrictions and hidden payments in case you decide to switch to another hosting provider. There might be some case scenarios when you need to change the provider, and for transferring all the data, you would pay huge sums while the monthly plan is relatively cheap.
Ignoring the ratings and reviews
Just a couple of the real comments from the users might give you more insights than you can ever imagine. Users can have valuable information about the pricing structure and bonuses according to their personal experience. You can also clearly understand whether the chosen hosting provider is considered to be reliable and has a good reputation.
Such information can be easily found on rating platforms, social media sites, blogs, and forums. You should be prepared for the real experience of the other users, but try to be critical because not every case scenario might be true or relevant to your case.
Forgetting about the security features
The last common mistake is forgetting to check the security features. Recently, the percentage of online threats has grown significantly so that sites can have issues with malware, hackers, data leakage, and more.
The most crucial factors in terms of security that should be considered are firewalls, backups, encryption, SSL certificates, malware scanning, and more. Also, an important factor is regular updates of the software and how the hosting provider reacts to security issues.
Summing up
Just by knowing about these 5 main mistakes, you can significantly exclude the risks that can occur when you decide to select a reliable hosting provider. Luckily, there are lots of options to choose from; the only this is to be attentive according to the details and specifically to the security feature, users’ feedback, checking limitations for the available plans, understanding your requirements, and selecting the appropriate hosting package, and ignoring free hosting providers or those with extremely low pricing.
