Deciding On Your Web Hosting Needs
While you may be tempted to use the same web hosting plan as your business associate, you want to look at what your needs are first. Each business will have specific needs and requirements when it comes to web hosting. You want to identify what your needs are first, then look for a suitable web hosting plan.
You are not going to go out and buy a two-seater sports car if you have young children? The same applies to your website. You want to ensure that your hosting plan is capable of running your website and any programs easily.
Web hosting plans and packages come in all sizes and shapes. Which doesn’t simplify the process at all. You don’t want to pay for features and services that you will never use. But, you also don’t want to run out of space in your first month either.
Questions to ask yourself include:
1. Future growth plans for your site?
2. Are you selling digital goods?
3. Will your customers be downloading files and data from your site, free or paid?
4. What type of shopping cart will you be using?
5. Will you be hosting a ton of graphics?
6. How much content, articles, reports, page etc. are you planning on creating?
7. How many email addresses will you require?
8. Do you want to send out emails via your website or have this done by a third party solution?
9. Will you be running special offers and sales?
Then on top of your answers for these questions you need to consider traffic. If you are planning on running a lot of promotions you need to have lots of bandwidth. Otherwise a sudden surge can knock your site off line.
Another area to consider is your page time loads. If you are running a large site with barely enough bandwidth your page time loads could be painfully slow. This can result in visitors leaving your site before your pages have loaded.
While your content is responsible for page time loads, these times can be affected by the type of servers and resources that your web host is offering. If a certain hosting plan sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Your site will pay for it at some time with slow load times or lots of time being offline.
When it comes to web hosting you may want to select a plan that easily accommodates all of your needs. This allows for future growth and the ability to handle increased traffic at certain times of the month.
