An important aspect of every website is its web host. Web hosting works behind the scenes but one that is quite important to overlook. Without a web host, your website will not be accessible online.
That being said and knowing how important they are, what are the qualities of a top
hosting company? Read further to find out the essential features of what constitutes a great web hosting provider.
1. High Availability and Guaranteed Uptime
Hosting companies can provide so many different features but the most important one for me is server uptime. As previously mentioned, without a web host, your website is not going to be available online and no user can access it as a result.
Therefore, you want to go with a company that is known for impeccable server uptimes.
Now, it is virtually impossible (at least for a typical hosting company) to provide 100% uptime since servers can fail at any time. But, you still want a relatively high rate (95-99% uptime).
If you are going for cloud hosting solutions, they should be able to provide you with 100% server reliability.
2. Backup Services
Since servers can potentially fail, you will need backups of your website at the ready.
That is why you should go for a web host that continually does backups of your websites and files so that you can simply restore them in the event of a crash.
Aside from that, they should also have backup servers on standby so that your website will not experience too long of a downtime (which may result in a huge loss in profits).
3. Managed Services
As a businessman, your mind is going to be preoccupied with providing the best possible service to your consumers. That being said, you will not be able to look at every aspect of your website as a result.
If you are quite a busy person, you could go with a hosting company that offers managed services. This basically means that they are going to do all of the maintenance work for you so that you do not have to. This service does come with an additional cost, though.
4. Scalability
This is especially useful for business websites that may see a surge in web traffic at certain times in the year.
Scalability just means that your website will be given additional resources to accommodate the influx of web traffic and other things.
The good thing is that scalable services are usually on a pay-as-you-go model wherein you only pay the web host whenever you need additional resources.
5. Robust Security Features
If your website is enjoying so much success, you can expect that there are malicious attackers that would bring you back down to earth from Cloud 9.
Fortunately, a good web hosting provider is one that has robust security features in place so that DDoS attacks, intrusion, and spam attacks are not possible.
6. Easy to Use Controls
As a webmaster, you are given control panels by your web hosting provider to help you manage the different aspects of your website.
Ideally, you want to go for cPanel if you are using a Linux server or Plesk for Windows- based machines. Both of the aforementioned control panels have amazing UIs that are easy to use even for the layman.
7. Affordable
Best of all, you need to go with a provider that you can subscribe to for the long term.
That is why you want one that is well within your budget.
