Without These 3 Web Hosting Features Your Website Is Dead In The Water

Today everyone has a website, not just businesses. It’s even becoming more customary for individuals to create websites, which includes blogs, to showcase their creative works. Companies looking to hire graphic designers, for example, will frequently ask to see their portfolio of work on their website—the assumption is that the person definitely has a site; it’s just a matter of what the URL is. When embarking on creating a site, a fundamental ingredient will be choosing a web hosting provider. After all, no matter how creative your content, no matter how clever your copy, no one will ever see it if you don’t have a web host.

[pullquote]One of the best analogies of a web host comes from “Web Hosting for Dummies.”[/pullquote] In it, a website is likened to a physical store, and a web host is likened to what would be the equivalent of the store’s location. The analogy makes sense since the host is where a site is “anchored,” or “parked.”

Moreover, just as the property landlord of a physical store is critical to its operation, the web hosting provider is also critical for the smooth running of the site. There is a multitude of features to choose from when considering a web host; however, some are more important than others.

Without the following three web hosting provider features, you can kiss your website goodbye.

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Guaranteed Server Uptime

Choosing web hosting from an outside provider, as opposed to hosting a site yourself, means you’re leaving it up to the hired provider to ensure that your site is fully functioning at all times and that there will not be any problems that your visitors will have when clicking through any of the web pages. Admittedly, it’s nearly impossible for any provider to guarantee that they can provide so-called “uptime” of 100 percent, just as a property landlord could never make a guarantee to a tenant that there would never be an issue during their tenancy period that might result in the landlord’s having to close the tenant’s business for a brief period of time.

Dedicated Server Hosting Or Shared Hosting

[pullquote]If you’re an individual with, say, a basic blog that you want to ensure is always up and running for visitors, then a shared hosting plan will be attractive to you.[/pullquote] Since you’ll be sharing the server with other users on the server, you benefit from lower overall fees, which encompasses fees for site maintenance and additional operations.

The economical price structure is, indeed, one of the best reasons to choose a shared hosting plan. Businesses, on the other hand, have a bit more at stake than to rely on a shared model.

The con to businesses is that if they were to share a server, another user’s, or site’s, activities could cause a server issue such as extremely slow page loading speeds that would, in turn, affect every domain connected to the server. That would be a major problem for a business.

Not getting through to a site could potentially do damage to the customer experience and lead to customers taking their patronage elsewhere. For that reason, dedicated server hosting, which web hosting providers offer, holds the edge as the better option for businesses, in particular, larger businesses. Dedicated hosting enables these businesses to be the sole kings of their domains.

Customer Service/Support

Nothing’s perfect. That means inevitably websites crash. When they do, site owners scramble to figure out why and contact their web hosting providers to resolve the situation. Can you imagine not being able to reach your provider in case of an emergency? Unfortunately, some have had that experience. It’s vital that a web host provides support 24 hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year. Don’t settle for anything less, and make sure you can reach them multiple ways; that means having an email support option as well as a telephone support option as a safeguard.

In Summary

Finding a low-cost web hosting provider can be easy. There are countless online ads for them everywhere you turn. In contrast, finding the best web host might take a little more effort, but it’ll be more than worth your time. Don’t aim for the lowest hanging fruit; go for the provider that can deliver on the features previously discussed so that you can be assured of having a trusted site that visitors would love to revisit.

IMAGE: PEXELS