Every great website needs an even greater hosting service behind it. There’s nothing worse than an intermittent site, or one that regularly crashes, especially if your customers depend on it.
You also need to factor in security and growth, your website in many cases is the first thing people experience of your business.
We’re exploring what good web hosting looks like and the things you should always make sure are in place when choosing a provider.
What is web hosting?
Web hosting is a means of storing your company website so that’s its accessible on the internet. You can host your site via an on-premise dedicated server or you can rent server space via a hosting provider. A cloud-based hosting service is generally the most popular for businesses that want the uptime and are looking to accelerate their growth.
Using a dedicated server is a good option for businesses that have the in-house expertise to manage it, but the majority of companies prefer to use the cloud option for ease, uptime and peace of mind.
Choosing your web hosting partner
You should make sure that the company you choose has all the relevant industry and ISO accreditations, as well as a proven track record. Check out their website for case studies and testimonials too as well as Google reviews.
Speed is a major factor with every website, the faster it is, the better the rankings. Make sure your provider has a UK based data centre so your web pages load quickly for your users. Proximity of the hosting service is key.
Uptime guarantee is another bonus, this should be set at 99.99% or even 100%. A good hosting service will have all the relevant fallback procedures in place to ensure your website stays online.
Security & patching
Your website hosting company should prioritise security over everything, sensitive data should always be protected from hackers. At data centre level, there should be multiple layers of encryption as well as security on-site 24/7.
SSL certificates, firewalls and spam prevention should be included as standard in the pricing. This is to protect your data and any information that visitors may share with you via the site.
Patching should come as standard too. Your provider should be ensuring that your website is consistently running on the latest version to prevent it becoming susceptible to bugs or malware.
Cloud hosting comes with the added advantage of being safe from any physical server issues, backups (and backups of the backups!) are always in place to failover. This will support your business continuity and disaster recovery plans too.
Extra services
Most hosting providers will offer email hosting, antivirus, networking and potentially other cloud services. If you’re planning on growing, choose a company that can offer you more and help you to accelerate that growth.
Support is also key as many ‘off the shelf’ hosting or free services don’t offer any level of human intervention. Make sure you’re always able to speak with a person to resolve any issues and talk you through your products. A knowledgeable team will information share and guide you through the intricacies of hosting in a way that’s simple to understand.
Your website may well evolve with your growth so its also a bonus if they are able to offer varying packages depending on what type of site you have. Scalability is key, fitting your current needs and anticipating your future requirements will be invaluable.
How we can help
We’re able to offer reasonable hosting packages that will support your growth from just £75 per year. Our packages go up in price depending on your data usage and the type of site you run.
Our friendly team are always on hand to talk you through your options if you’re unsure. What they don’t know about hosting isn’t worth knowing! We’ll always keep a close eye on your hosting metrics too and advise scaling up or down should you need to. Theres no limits so you’ll never experience hardware restraints.
Give us a call or drop us an email to chat through your web hosting requirements.
