As with many over packed service sectors, especially of the technical variety, asking a search engine who you should host your website with brings a disturbing number of results. They all claim to be super-fast and they all offer a massive number of incomprehensible features and packages. It’s a recipe for confusion and picking the wrong one may leave a very bad taste in your mouth.
While we’re on a culinary theme, a fair analogy for picking a website host is baking a cake (bear with me on this one). All cakes have some basic ingredients, then some specific ingredients that make it your chosen flavour, and lastly some “flair” ingredients that make it all yours and give it individual sparkle.
The basics
All hosting offers will have the basics of underlying operating system and platform and, of course, cost don’t confuse cheap with good value. Getting this wrong is like putting salt in your cake rather than sugar. Big problem. Depending on the company you may need start again, or they may be able to help you put it right for a fee. Either way, it’s added hassle best avoided.
Specifics
How they organise their servers (do you share, or is it all yours)? Where are they physically located? What if there is a technical problem? Can you make changes to the server configuration? How good is their security? If these specifics are wrong then you may run into trouble sooner or later. It may stop your running your site how you want or even cause the site to have intermittent issues that frustrate your users (and you). Getting it right means the sweet taste of success is within your reach.
Individual sparkle
Things like your data storage needs and how much data you can transfer on a monthly basis will insure that your development isn’t held up and once you launch your users are kept happy. You will need to calculate these types of variables before signing up to anything. Having a keen understanding of how you want your site to perform over time is a good way to help you get a package that is uniquely suited to you.
As you nervously take your new creation out of the hot oven and launch it into the world, the correct ingredients in the hosting will be evident. When I help my customers select a host or I host for them, I make sure it will be more “Great British Bake Off” than “Supermarket bargain basement”. The site will be quick to access and on the right platform for your business needs. Behind the scenes you’ll be able to make the changes you need and talk to the right people quickly if you need to. The cherry on top will be that your monthly fees will be within your budget and, should you need to grow, options for your hosting to grow with you will be available. In short, you can have your cake and eat it, too.
Please feel free to get in contact if you require help with your hosting.