It’s widely known that a website is an incredibly effective tool to expand and market any business. It may also serve as a powerful tool to enhance your brand awareness and reach the Global client audience. But no website can appear in the World Wide Web without being hosted somewhere. The web hosting field is dedicated to meet these particular needs.
With such an extensive variety of web hosting services available on the market today, making the right choice may turn to be a tricky task. Going for the first solution you come across with is not a wise idea either. Frankly speaking, the optimal performance, stability, uninterrupted online presence and overall success of your online venture will depend to the great extent on the type and quality of the web hosting platform you choose. That’s why, you should take your time to make the most deliberate choice. In the article below I’m going to go through some crucial criteria and factors you should take into consideration when selecting an ideal web hosting service for your online venture.
Choose the Proper Service Type
First of all, you will have to decide what web server type is going to fit best your website in terms of the disk volume and amount of power and resources provided. If your online business is just on its initial stages or you are running a small website, it’s quite obvious that basic hosting essentials will be quite enough for your related needs. Here, shared server hosting makes a reasonable choice as a rather simple and inexpensive solution.
Whether you own a high-traffic, data-intensive website or need to host complex web applications and require a more resourceful virtual environment than a shared server account typically provides, then going for VPS hosting (virtual private servers) makes great sense. Though being a partition of a physical machine, every single VPS server account has its own operating system, bunch of resources allotted and obviously guarantees absolute isolation from neighboring projects.
For those established online businesses having advanced hosting requirements and willing to avoid any risks typically associated with sharing server resources, renting a standalone server unit, or in other words, going for dedicated hosting is definitely an ideal choice.
Windows Vs. Linux OS
The next logical step is to select the most appropriate OS (operating system). Here you will typically have to choose between two basic solutions available – either Windows or Linux – the most widespread and popular operating systems around the Globe. The good news is that this choice is not going to be challenging for you. The principal factor to consider here is the programming language and scripts used to develop your website. If it is based on ASP, ASP.NET scripts and various Microsoft products, then Windows hosting is an obvious choice. Linux-based hosting ensures absolute compatibility and optimal performance for web projects written using PHP, Perl, CGI, Python and some other open-source technologies.
Going Managed or Unmanaged
Not every company and business can afford expenses on having its own IT staff and related infrastructure in-house. Here managed-based web hosting solutions come into play. Typically, a web hosting company takes full responsibility on all technical processes and tasks including: initial server setup, reboots, configurations, application installation, security patches, monitoring server performance, ports security, antivirus, etc. In such a way, you won’t have to worry about any aspects of running and managing your virtual environment, while all technical issues that may arise will be solved on the fly by hosting experts of your provider. Using managed hosting solutions allows to save a considerable amount of time that can be focused on your core business competences and growth.
If you or IT staff are ready to handle all server management and maintenance tasks in-house, then there is no reason to pay extra money on managed services. In such a way, you are advised to opt for unmanaged hosting plans. Besides, only self-managed hosting can provide absolute control over your business virtual environment, which is simply impossible with its managed-based alternative.
Web Hosting Company
The last, but no less important point in this list of criteria influencing your choice is a web hosting provider. You are going to entrust your online business to their hands, so your choice should be the most deliberate one. Obviously, the overall performance, efficiency and safety of your website depend mostly on data center facilities, IT infrastructure and network of your provider as well as on the quality and level of support services they provide. You are strongly advised to opt for hosting companies operating in their own data center facilities.
You should also take your time to check the company background, credibility level, product and service portfolio, customer support and technical assistance provided. The client list may speak even more eloquently about how established and reputable your provider is. As more successful and enterprise-level web projects are using their web hosting services, as more confident you can be that you are making the right choice. Don’t forget to look through reviews and testimonials on independent forums and related web resources to find out what real clients think about any particular web hosting company you are interested in.
To sum up, choosing the proper web platform to host your website is surely the best guarantee of its top-notch performance, maximum efficiency and ultimate security. You may enjoy total peace of mind knowing that it will turn into a successful online venture, irrespective of whether it is a personal blog, small web store or a large corporate web project. If you have some other useful tips to share, feel free to post them in the comments below.
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