There are so many choices out there to choose a web host, and for a good reason. There are so many options for everything from the hardware to the software to the services that it’s easy to get lost.
You want your site to load fast? You want it to be secure? You want your site to look good? How do you know where to begin? We’ll help you make your choice and help you get the best from your host!
Tips for Choosing a Web Host
Our first tip for choosing a web host is to think about what you want your site to do. If you’re going to monetize your site, make sure your host has the right package to do that for you.
You may have plans to grow your site or run multiple websites. It’s best to host all of them in the same data center, so it’s nice to have an option with various data centers.
What are your options for hosting your website? If you want to host your site on a dedicated server, you may have several options like I have mine. You can have a dedicated server from the provider, or you can host it yourself. You can buy the server equipment or lease the servers if you want to go the leasing route. It depends on how much control you want to have over the hosting.
I would instead lease as a way to keep my control, but you can host your site on dedicated servers if you don’t mind a smaller pool of resources or if you’re willing to install the hardware yourself and manage the server yourself.
For the average user, I would recommend GreenGeeks. Also, check out the GreenGeeks review at Hosting Manual.
There are several other types of hosting, such as Virtual Private Servers (VPS), VPS for Drupal, Virtual Private Servers for WordPress, and more. There are also HostGator Standard VPS and HostGator Pro VPS Hosting.
As a novice web developer or publisher, you may want to host your site on a basic server with a disk space of less than 10GB. You can also choose from an array of cloud hosting plans to host your sites, like Amazon Web Services, Digital Ocean, and Linode.
Our next tip is to know what you’re getting.
With many web hosts, you get the most bang for your buck with the most expensive package. It’s best to test different plans and prices to determine the best value for you. Once you do, you can decide whether or not to invest in a more expensive package.
This article is a good baseline to determine what you need. It’s a guide to knowing what you need and when to upgrade your web host!