Launching an online business is one thing, and running it successfully is a totally different thing. In order for you to be successful in both, you need to be strategic, especially with the overall operational costs. Considering that marketing, maintenance, and the redesign of a website do not come cheaply, keeping the startup and operational costs manageable and financial stress low is key.
Having said that, the first step towards running a thriving and ever-growing site is to have a hosting service that is adequate for your business needs, and you do not have to break a bank during the monthly or annual subscription. This is true because the less you spend on hosting, the more money you will have to take care of other aspects of your site.
Affordable hosting services does not mean cheap and unreliable services. There are reputable hosting companies such as Hostinger that offer “Web Hosting – The Fastest Hosting – For Only $0.80 Now” reliable services at a very competitive price while being around for years, along with guaranteed 99.9% uptime, 24/7/365 customer support, cutting-edge features, and site speed are all remarkable.
If you’ve assessed the amount you spend each month just to keep your website running (or you are about to if you are new), you have already realized that you are paying (or about to pay) a considerable amount of money for web hosting services, but that does not have to be the case. We are about to cover the basics of finding a reputable hosting provider that offers top-of-the-line hosting services at a very competitive price.
After reading this article, you won’t have to pay top dollar for a service you do not need.
Know Exactly What You Need
An in-depth understanding of the kind of activities that will be running through your site will help you make an informed decision when settling for a particular web host. A site with a simple front end for uploading blog posts will require fewer features compared to a big data website with multiple pages. If your website is going to receive thousands of visitors at every instance, you will definitely need a VPS or a dedicated server.
Choose a Hosting Package That Meets Your Needs
Assuming that you now understand what kind of a web host you need, the next step is to choose a hosting package or plan with features and functionalities that perfectly meet your needs. Startup businesses tend to go for shared hosting plans as a saving plan.
But if you find that you are getting more traffic than anticipated and your site is getting slow, don’t hesitate to move to more powerful options such as cloud VPS for better performance. Remember that you need your clients to be happy, and no one wants to visit a page that takes forever to load. VPS will provide a stable site with super-fast loading pages, making your clients keep coming back for more services.
It Won’t Hurt to Compare Prices
You have already Googled some reputable web-hosting providers, but you were not too keen on other aspects such as the available features, speed, uptime, availability of SSDs, customer support, etc. It’s now time to circle back and go through the list with a third eye.
Check the services provided by each company against their prices. Go for the hosting that offers the same services at a lower price. While choosing the most affordable package and host, make sure the plan you grab meets all the requirements of your business website. In other words, don’t just settle for a package because it’s cheap, it should meet all the demands of your site.
Though it might be tempting—especially when operating under a very tight budget—never go for a free web hosting service. Even though such hosts will use some tricks to entice you, do not fall for that trap unless you have an exceptional resilience for dealing with ads and long chains of hiccups in every other step of the way. You get the point; free web hosting is a no go zone if you want to run a business. It’s not as reliable as it needs to be, plasters ads everywhere, makes you look unprofessional and most often requires you to use a subdomain. You don’t want to run a website on a limited resource with a server that keeps bottlenecking.
Ask For Recommendations or Go Online and Check Reviews
You probably know a person who’s running a website, call that person, and ask for recommendations. If you don’t know anyone, you can look for review pages like emit.reviews. With a few keystrokes, you will be able to find out the reliability of different hosts. While doing your research, pay close attention to how each company responds to unhappy clients. This will give you an idea of how serious each web host is when it comes to improving their services. The way a company responds to unhappy customers will also help you rate its customer service; is it poor, average, or excellent?
Wrapping Up: How to Know When You Are Not Getting Value for Your Money
If you are experiencing one or all of the following, know that your hard-earned money is probably not well utilized.
- If your site keeps going down. Unless it’s a free hosting service, your host should at least guarantee 99.9% uptime. Downtimes will not just cost you clients, but they will bring your SERP ranking down and frustrate all your efforts of being visible.
- If you keep experiencing speed issues. If your site is receiving large traffic but its slow, it’s time to conduct an in-depth investigation. If the problem is with the server, it’s high time to migrate to a different host that grantees speed stability.
- If you are experiencing poor customer service. Customer service can be termed as poor when;
- It will take more than a day for someone to respond to your query.
- Somebody will respond to your query, but no action will be taken, and you might find yourself repeating the same problem over and over.
- You get a response from agents who seem to be rude or generally unfriendly.
- If you are paying for some hidden charges.
- If you continuously face technical issues that your host can’t handle.
There we go, now you’re ready to make an educated decision on what web hosting provider is right for you. Good luck!
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