When you’re building your business’s website, you have a lot to consider. Your website is one of the key factors of good branding, and it’s worthwhile taking as much time as you need to figure out the basics. The aesthetics of the landing page, your copy, and your logo are all incredibly important. However, there is something more fundamental that often gets short shrift.
The hosting you use for your website could make or break your success. Most people assume that all hosting is essentially the same as if it’s just an empty space for your website. But many have found out the hard way that bad web hosting can lead to failure.
The cautionary tales from users of GoDaddy and Bluehost, among other big names, should be fair warning that bad hosts can sabotage your business. Here is what you need to consider to avoid falling into this trap.
VPS Hosting Is Important
One problem with basic types of hosting is that your privacy is inevitably compromised. You’re sharing a server with many others, and while you save money, you put yourself at unnecessary risk.
On the other hand, fully dedicated hosting is way more expensive and requires more technical input on your side. If you don’t have a pro web developer on your team, it might not be an option.
VPS hosting provides the perfect balance. It gives you control of a virtual computer installed on a shared server. Think of it like renting an apartment. You share a building with your neighbors but have your own demarcated property. There are many great VPS hosting options at various price points.
Unmanaged VPS are the cheapest in the pricing table, followed by the SaaS managed ones (such as Cloudways, Runcloud, Serverpilot, Moss.sh, EasyEngine, Gridpane, Forge, Cloudron, etc.), and then the company-managed VPS servers that come with either Plesk or Cpanel software.
No matter the price grade, investing in a solid VPS or cloud hosting (with dedicated resources) is one sure way to improve your business fortune once it starts growing in visits or starts having daily sales activities.
Do A Deep Dive Into The Reviews
Reviews are a tricky subject in today’s world. We rely on them to know more about what we want to buy or the service we intend to pay for because there are no other reliable ways to reach that level of quality control. However, many companies pay for fake reviews and manage to bury the bad reviews.
Therefore, if you really want to know about something, you need to go deep into the reviews. This is especially true with hosting, which is impossible to properly “test” beforehand. One of the quickest ways to do it is to filter out the best reviews and have a look at those with one or two stars. If what these bad reviews say sounds valid, and if the complaints are consistent among them, you should think again before paying for a subscription.
Another good way to filter your reviews is to check through these popular sites for getting an honest hosting review to see if the reviews on them are consistent with what’s shared on the review site/blog you’ve filtered out for the hosting product you wish to buy.
Customer Service Is Key
Many products and services come from companies with bad customer service and it doesn’t really matter. Unless something goes seriously wrong, you’re unlikely to ever need to contact support. This is not the case with hosting.
No hosting is perfect 100% of the time. Something will always go wrong, and that’s okay. But if the customer service is bad, you are going to be incredibly frustrated. Because you have so little control over your hosting, you will feel helpless.
When doing your deep dive into the reviews, see what customers say about customer service. If there are consistent complaints about support being unreachable in a crisis or rude and unhelpful, steer clear.
