What Questions to Ask Before Choosing a Hosting Service Provider

There are thousands upon thousands of hosting service providers out there, with costs ranging from next to nothing, to thousands of pounds per year. It’s essential for you to find a hosting provider so that your site is accessible during times of high traffic, and maintains high-level security to ensure protection from potential hackers, among other issues.

What is Hosting?

To summarise, hosting services take your website once it’s built and developed, and deploy it on a server (a powerful computer that’s always available) with a configuration to make sure that your website can be reached by the world (or whoever you want to access it).

Can I Host My Website Myself?

It is entirely possible to host a website on your own home computer if you had the technical skills, but generally, an incredibly bad idea!

• Powering down your computer at home for the night to save electricity? Your website turns off. Not good.
• Your website gets busy due to high traffic or bad coding? Suddenly your computer runs slowly, and you can’t do any other work.
• Website isn’t secure? Your computer gets hacked, malware gets installed, and next time you go to do your online banking, bad things happen.

Therefore, we would suggest finding a provider with expertise that suits your websites needs and demands and allows you to spend time completing other essential tasks for your site. To some degree, it’s quite true in that you get what you pay for. A lot of it boils down to the customer service you get, the support you get, and the ‘features’ you get.

So, Before You Choose a Provider, Ask These Questions:

• Do they take (and test!) regular backups of your data?
• Can they provide monitoring of the services they supply, so they know (and you know) if there’s a problem?
• Are they available for emergency support 24×7?
• Do they keep their systems up to date with all the security releases?
• Can they provide advice for your website, or even supply your specific requirements?
• Can their systems handle high levels of traffic, and provide resilience in case one piece of hardware crashes?

If you have any other questions, feel free to contact our team for more information. Our in-house hosting team have vast experience in hosting sites for a range of clients, from SME’s to multinational corporations, and can consult with you as to how to move forward with your site.