You probably know that without hosting, your website won’t be available on the Internet, right?
A web hosting provider goes hand in hand with owning a website. To make it more clear for you – simply imagine that your website is your house, and the web hosting is the “online land” you are using from a server.
Web hosting companies, such as Cloudstrada, rent you an online space which you have to pay for monthly or yearly, just so your site is available to your worldwide users. Nowadays, there are many web hosting companies that offer a variety of services for a cheap price. This might make the choice a lot more difficult for you because when launching your website you might be a little unsure what you really need.
But if you still don’t know how good that is, we’ll explain the essential features that most web hosts offer to help you out. We’ll also give you an insight into the basic features that’ll suit your website.
Data Storage & Disc Space
When it comes to data storage and disc storage, different hosting providers offer different services. Many hosting providers boast for offering unlimited data, however, this is, not fully the case in reali
ty. There may be some hidden charges for exceeding the average site usage behind “unlimited data” plans, so be sure to stay alert. Sometimes it’s better to know the exact amount of data and disc storage you are allowed to use.
Bandwidth
The higher your bandwidth is, the more visitors can access your site without overloading it. The end goal is to provide a good user experience. If you have low bandwidth and slow loading times then you can expect errors and delays. But you won’t need high bandwidth if your website is new, as there still won’t be that much traffic for your website to handle.
The bandwidth you choose also depends on what your users are going to do on your site: whether they’ll be buying something online, watching videos, looking at photos, or just reading your blog. The bandwidth is closely connected to the nature of your site.
Customer Support
This feature is quite essential for beginners. Web hosting providers which offer 24/7 tech support are really valuable and this feature shouldn’t be underestimated. Sometimes the QA section isn’t enough to fix the downtime you might be experiencing on your website. That’s why you’ll need a host which will be there for you at any time. Picking a web hosting provider in Malta, such as Cloudstrada would be a convenient choice for you because of the special attention that we give to each of the websites that are hosted at our servers. It’s always quality over quantity for us.
SSL Certification
SSL means “Secure Socket Layer”. This certification guarantees the security of your personal information and the personal information of your website visitors. Man
y popular web hosting providers will offer you an SSL certificate for free if you choose them as your host. However, this isn’t the case with every hosting provider. Some don’t offer SSL certificates and that’s when you should go for a TSL (Transport Layer Security) which is the alternative of an SSL.
When you first launch your website, you won’t need many email addresses. This becomes an important feature once your company starts growing. So, when choosing a hosting provider go for one which offers multiple email addresses for your domain name. This will save you the time and effort you’d need to handle all this by a third party later on.
Domains
If you are planning to have several websites, then we recommend you choose a web host which will let you create several domain names under the same account. This will make things easier for you in the future. Managing everything from one account is way easier than having to set up a different account for each domain.
Also, buying a domain name from the same platform as your hosting will keep these two things kind of “stuck together”. This means that if you change your mind concerning the web hosting provider, it will be more difficult to make the shift.
Uptime
There isn’t anything more frustrating for your users, than the inability to access your site
because of downtime. Don’t be easily fooled by going for the first web hosting provider which guarantees that you’ll have 99.9% uptime. The scheduled downtime percentage isn’t included in these numbers. So, in order to play it safe, check out some of the reviews for each hosting provider before you choose them. Afterward, you can check your website downtime using the Pingdom tool and see whether you’ve made the right choice concerning your web host.
Backups
Knowing that all your files are kept safe and secure through regular backups by the web hosting provider is really important. While you should also do backups yourself, expecting this service by a web host is really basic these days. Once you know that the hosting provider has everything backed up, your information won’t be as vulnerable to bots, malware , and hackers.
So, now that you have a clue which basic features you should look for in a web hosting provider, it’s time to make up your mind!
