Selecting a hosting plan is a crucial part of building a successful website. Unfortunately, not all hosting packages are equal and there are some all-too-easy traps to fall into as you are trying to come up with the best host. Setting up a blog, e-commerce site, company website or otherwise, you need to be sure that your host is reliable, efficient, and available to support you when you need them. In this article, we will give you tips to avoid some mistakes regarding web hosting.
- Falling for a Free Host
Yes, there are free hosting packages out there. Many different companies offer free web hosting services at no cost. This “good value” might seem genuine, but it’s guaranteed to cause all kinds of problems further down the line: it either, they do not offer sufficient features you need for your website or most of them force you to place advertisements on your website, your site will be painfully slow, you can’t scale up your website as your business develops and you might not be able to run the scripts that you need.
- Not Clearly Defining Your Requirements and Restrictions
Hosting companies will draw your attention to seemingly limitless options and extras. But in fact, this ‘limitless’ option has limits. So, you should keep a list of what resources your website needs and add to that list as it grows. This will make it easier when you need to upgrade your web hosting services in the future. Then the restrictions will not be laid out to you, so better be observant and make reading a habit. For example, bandwidth is one of the most common deceptive factors on the initial spec of hosting packages – while it might say ‘unlimited bandwidth,’ this isn’t usually the case. Then later on you may find that it’s not allowed to install your software, no SSH, and no options for multiple POP accounts.
- Not Keeping Record of their Contact Details
They all have excellent and responsive customer service systems- email, forum, and live support. But when your web hosting provider is down for days, including their own site, you won’t be able to contact them at all when you’re having your own issue. Having records of their telephone number is a must. The quicker you can get hold of answers and fix your site issues, the quicker your site will be back up and running, and you won’t lose sales.
- Trying or Putting All Eggs in One Basket
It may seem a good idea to manage all your websites in one account. It is good to not have to remember too many login details, don’t need to open too many browsers, and have a good deal and simplified bills. However, what if the server crashes? If your websites generate income and they are all interconnected, then yours will go down too. This downtime could cause a major headache if you’re relying on generating income through those sites. So, either, you can ask your host if they can split your account across multiple servers or use separate hosts for different sites.
- Relying on Host’s Backups
It shouldn’t happen that you lose all your data. But it happens far too often – a customer’s website goes down indefinitely and they couldn’t put the website on another web hosting provider because they didn’t have any backups of their own. Always keep your own backups, even if your web hosting provider performs backups as well if you don’t want to dig out your content from Google’s cache or Archive.org.
- Forgetting to Read Hosting Review First
To get a sense of the quality of service, read their web hosting reviews to help you rule out hosts immediately, particularly if: if people are complaining about this, it’s a definite red flag, again if people have noticed that slow loading speeds and frequent site crashes is a recurring problem, it’s likely to affect you as well, and security issues if any concerns are being raised about this, it’s a no-go.
- Selecting a Host that Does not Give a Refund Guarantee
The price is so good and seems like everything is perfect for you, but later on, you find the opposite. Then you cannot just stop the service immediately because there is no refund guarantee and all your money will be wasted. This is why you have to check if they have a refund guarantee. Also read through the “terms and conditions” carefully so that you are 100% sure about the time frame for refunds, as well as the amount that they would reimburse if it came to it.
- Trusting Your Host to Have the Latest Software
Having the latest software is very important. As you grow the software you will be needing that will be perfect for you is upgrading too. New software or the latest patches are meant to plug security holes. Check with your web hosting provider what versions they are running and how often they make updates before you purchase web hosting services from them.
Now you can avoid these common mistakes if you will keep this in my mind. Regarding this web hosting, I use the most reputable web hosting company that I met, you can also check this out at www.runhost.com.
