How to Choose the Best Web Host for Your Project
Choosing a web hosting plan is easy, as long as you have a concept in mind: what website you want to have and how much effort, money and time you are willing to pour into it.
Then, finding the best hosting solution for you will be much easier.
Still, when evaluating the best website hosts is better to know the peculiarities of the hosting industry. Here are several strategic pointers to consider:
What Is Unlimited Hosting?
You will see many hosting providers offering unlimited storage space, bandwidth, monthly visitors, and so forth.
Others prefer to dub their plans “unmetered”. It sounds slightly less sexy than unlimited, while being marginally more correct. Both terms carry marketing value rather than actual information for the end-user.
Unlimited, as in limitlessly large, hosting simply doesn’t exist. What hosting providers actually mean is that they don’t impose fixed limits on their plans. It looks great at first glance, which is why they are doing it.
In reality, every single hosting product has its parameters, including all unlimited and unmetered plans. But instead of pointing out what these parameters are, it’s become an industry practice to label them “unlimited” and then to specify in the ToS that the usage should fall within regular usage.
As vague as it gets and much less preferable to clearly stated plan limitations. Knowing what you are paying for helps big time with planning and budgeting.
Inventive Pricing Schemes
The vast majority of the best web hosting sites share a similar approach to pricing: low introductory prices and considerably higher renewal fees.
You can start hosting a website for as low as $0.60 per month, but you will not have such a negligible fee forever. And you will never pay only $0.60.
Normally, the prices you see advertised when you open the site of a web hosting service are valid if you pay for a long period of time – three years, usually. So, the monthly web hosting fee advertised is not a lie, but you cannot simply pay $0.60 and be done with it.
Once this initial deal expires, the actual regular price kicks in.
Often, the real cost is three or four times higher than the initial, sign-up fee.
Do You Need Specialized Hosting?
Are you planning on using WordPress or Joomla?
If so, something optimized for the respective CMS is a good idea, especially further down the road.
Consider a company that caters to WordPress or Joomla.
You can start with a basic shared plan and upgrade seamlessly to a specialized plan when the time is right.
Where Is Your Target Audience Located?
Choosing a data center close to the potential audience you wish to reach translates into a faster loading speed for the end-users, which is very advantageous when it comes to ranking with search engines like Google.
The best web hosting for UK businesses is not necessarily the same as for enterprises based in Australia.
Always host your site in a data center located on the same continent as the bulk of your site visitors.
How Many Sites Do You Want to Launch?
The number of hosted domains tells only half the story.
Best check things like allocated CPU, RAM, bandwidth, and, most of all, databases allowed per plan.
Realistically, they can be much more restrictive than the number of hosted domain names.
Do You Need Email Hosting?
Most web hosting offers include email hosting but not all.
Specialized hosts like WP Engine and Kinsta and some website builders don’t.
