So i get this question alot and i suppose its because there are so many different web-hosts to choose from to it can be very hard to make a decision on which host is best for you. Obviously one factor that everyone thinks about is the price. This however should never be the deciding factor when you are purchasing web hosting, mainly because so much can rest upon your website being active and accessible. This is no more true than if you are running a ecommerce site as even an hours downtime could result in 100s of pounds worth in lost sales and sometimes angry customers.
Another decision that you are going to have to work out when deciding which web host is best for your business is if you want dedicated/managed or shared hosting. It may seem confusing if you have never heard the distinctions before but it is very important that you understand the differences.
- Dedicated hosting means that the server (computer) your website is running on has only your site running on it. This means that there wont be any other sites that you have to share your bandwidth with. This hosting is only used for very large sites that get 1000s of visitors per day. Also with dedicated hosting you may need to know how to manage the server or employ someone who will do it for you.
- Managed hosting means that you may or may not be sharing the server with other websites, however the host will be managed by the hosting company for you (unlike dedicated). The main advantage of this option is that it is cheaper than dedicated and you don’t have to worry about the settings and general running of the server
- Shared hosting is the cheapest of the bunch and sometimes looked down upon by internet nerds like myself! However hosting is all relative and theres no point in paying for dedicated hosting if you don’t need it. As you can guess shared means you are sharing with other websites on the server. However aslong as the server is setup/managed correctly then the other websites should not be able to affect yours. Shared hosting can also be really cheap as low as £5 per month and is often ideal for small or startup businesses.
As you can see there are a few different options when it comes to hosting. Theres actually a lot more options if i am honest but i don’t want to overwhelm you too soon. The main thing to remember is that you can always upgrade your hosting package as you need it. So if your site does become very popular overnight you can usually ask your host to bump you up to a higher plan as required. There may be a little down time as they switch your plans but it think that is a small price to pay for scalability.
As a side note you may also want to consider what features your web-host comes preinstalled with. I don’t just mean the scripting language (ill talk about that later) but the many free scripts that are now available. I will give you and great example, this blog runs on a program called Wordpress. Now this software is free and allows me to post all my blog entries and content here with no web design knowledge at all! The great thing was that because my hostgator has a wordpress install from the cpanel i was able to setup this site in about 5 minutes. It was really a case of two forms that i had to fill out and i had a new blog that was ready to go.
So hopefully i didn’t get too off track there but hopefully you have a little more knowledge about the hosting world than you did when you started reading!
