You may have invested a lot of resources into designing an eye-catching website that captures the essence of your brand, but if you haven’t yet invested in a reliable web hosting service, website crashes, cyber threats, and dreadfully slow loading times could overshadow a once excellent reputation.

There are a ton of website hosts out there, but before signing up with one, you must consider your web hosting needs. To understand what criteria your web host provider needs to meet, ask yourself these questions:

·      What type of website are you building?

·      Does your website require special software?

·      Do you expect your online business to expand?

·      What kind of budget are you working with

·      Do you want to manage your own website?

·      How many website domains do you own?

 

What type of website are you building?

 

Whether you run an e-commerce site, a stand-alone blog, online storefront, or lead generating site will determine what features must be included in your web hosting package to ensure a seamless and secure customer interface.    

As a general rule of thumb, the more functionality your website requires, the greater amount of storage capacity you’ll need. And as far as cyber security goes, no matter the type of site you’re building, you need to check that your website host can protect your customers’ information by ensuring a secure connection, specifically via an SSL certificate.

 

Does your business website require special software?

 

If you’re unfamiliar with the various software options available to you, that’s okay. You don’t necessarily need to know the difference between Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X or that plugins are small software programs that add specific features to your website. To get a better idea of your software needs, the main questions you should ask are how customizable do you want your website to be and what functions must it have?

 

Do you expect your business to expand?

 

This is an important question as you’ll want to find a web hosting service with room to grow, meaning they have upgrade options. There’s nothing worse than paying too much for something either you don’t need or that can’t provide the processing power your site requires.  

For newly established business sites that expect 40,000 unique monthly visitors or less, a shared web hosting account should suffice. As your business grows, however, you might need to upgrade to a Virtual Private Server (VPS) or dedicated server plan.

 

What kind of budget are you working with? 

 

You should never skimp on reliable web hosting services, but you shouldn’t have to pay for more than what you need. You should find a web host that offers customizable packages geared toward your specific small business needs with terms that allow you to upgrade when you’re ready.

 

Will you be managing your own website?

 

Depending on your technical skills or even the time you have available to manage your website, there are a variety of server plans that grant varying levels of access to your site’s control panel and server to perform functions such as daily backups, security scanning, or core file edits. If you’re not intimidated by operating software such as Linux, a self-managed dedicated served plan might be right for you. If you’re not too keen to run your own site, however, a fully managed dedicated server plan can take the hassle out of maintaining an online storefront as the web host will handle every aspect of your website.

 

How many website domains do you plan to own?

 

If you own a single unified business without subsidiaries, you might think this is an odd question. However, purchasing the rights to multiple domain names can ensure outside parties can’t hijack your company name or similar and related domain names to leverage your hard-earned brand recognition for redirects to their wannabe site. If you have purchased multiple domain names, you’ll need a hosting plan that allows you to manage numerous websites, such as Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting.

Whatever your web hosting needs may be, the hosting platform you choose should be able to offer a reliable, secure, and efficient connection between server and customer. If you’re in need of a web host that can do just that, contact Social Spice Media. We offer a variety of customizable web hosting packages to suit your specific business needs and the technical support to keep your site running smoothly.