What to Look For in a Web Host 101: What Kind of Web Hosting Do I Need?

Are you trying to find out what to look for in a web host? Selecting web hosting services to launch your new website or blog online can be hard. So today, I wanted to give you some pointers that may help you to make a good web hosting decision that you will be happy with. Some time ago, I had that very question before hosting my websites including this website learnanet.com!

Web hosting services are an absolute must to position your business online. However, just like a person who looks at himself before going onside, the best web host will determine in great part how your website appears online. It doesn’t matter how pretty the design, the works, or product, knowing what to look for in a web host to build your new site is the first step.

What Are Web Hosting Services?

To keep this nice and simple, web hosting services are what allows you to make your site visible or accessible on the internet. There are tons of web hosting companies that will allow to occupy space on their servers for a monthly fee. Some are cheap while others are more expensive.

There are companies like Namehero, Bluehost, Siteground, InMotion Hosting, Hostinger, A2 Hosting just to name a few. All of these web hosting companies that I just mentioned will provide you several tools that will help you to get your website up and running on the web.

Additional essential features that I you should look for are website builders, cpanel, seo tools, FTP, SSL (secure sockets layer) which are ideal.

How to Select Web Hosting Services

Now, when it comes to selecting a web hosting service to host your new website(s), there are some things that you may want to consider first. First, are you looking for something basic for perhaps a 1 page website? Or do you need unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth to be able to build a website with several pages? This may help you to determine your monthly budget for web hosting costs.

Ask yourself..do I want to build the website myself or do I want to hire a web designer? I think that this is great to answer because if your hire an experienced web designer you will likely have to sign an agreement to authorize him to host and update your website. This could be good or bad for you.

If you want to be a hands off web design, your web designer will host your website on his server, however you have no complete control because any changes or updates you must to have him do it. However, on the other hand if you are willing to learn how to build simple blogs or websites, then you find your own web hosting services and host your own website.

What to Look For In A Web Host

One type of web hosting services that you want to stay clear of are the FREE web hosting services. Some think that free is better but it can be a huge problem for your business. Although free, they will not always have a 100% guaranteed uptime. This means that your website could running online one day and not accessible different hours of the day. For potential customers, this leaves a bad taste on their tongue and confidence is lost.

Your website should be online 24/7 so your customers can find you when searched for on the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. Another problem are unwanted advertisement placed on sites that have free web hosting services. You have no control over these ads and they redirect the attention away from your site. So stay away from free hosting offers.

How to Select Web Hosting Services by Costs

However, let’s return back to the costs of web hosting services. Depending on your hosting needs, you can look to pay anywhere from about $3 – $10 per month on average. If you are looking for a premium web hosting services for WordPress with higher performance, then you can try WP Engine which runs about $25 per month.

I have seen some cheap web hosting services such as Hostinger WordPress hosting that start at $2.99 cents/month. Hostinger is super cheap and will provide ALL of the website building tools that you need for creating blogs, eCommerce store and MORE!

I have created several WordPress websites using Hostinger online including this blog you are reading now. I really love all of the resources that they provide for beginners online.

If you need something super basic and have a shoestring budget, then Hostinger hosting is a great host to consider.

Get up to 90% OFF Hostinger web hosting, get started right now below!

However, there are other web hosting providers that you could consider also to create your website.

Bluehost is the another web host I recommend being it’s really affordable and comes with everything you need to build a site. Also, they are 1 of 3 web hosting providers that come highly recommended WordPress.org. After Bluehost, Siteground and Dreamhost are also recommended due to their great WordPress performance.

When you determine which web hosting services are best for your domain name you will be given options to pay. Some web host allow you to pay monthly for services, while others allow you to make a one-time payment for the year or couple of years bundled.

Bluehost will give you a FREE Domain for your 1st year.

NOTE: By paying upfront you will save more money in your pocket versus paying month to month. However, when deciding how to select web hosting services, you should select which plan is best for your personal budget and web hosting needs.

Uptime Performancene: 

It’s important to know how good a web host’s uptime is. This lets you know how much time time your website is visible online. You don’t want to get a web host with low uptime because your customers and visitors will not find you online.

Today, you conducted a search online to discover “what to look for in web host” and thankfully you made it to this site. It doesn’t really matter what term you use to search online, Google pays good attention to visitor experience and how your website performs online. This is why it’s important to have a reliable web hosting provider that has great uptime performance.

Something that you should look for in a a web hosting is a CDN. A CDN is a content delivery network and it is like the invisible backbone of your website.

There a tons of cdn benefits when it comes to managing your website online. They will help your website to process and balance high volumes of web traffic without crashing. It will allow it to process several requests globally and promote super fast page loads and content delivery from various endpoints and data centers. You can always get a content delivery network including with your web hosting plan from the best Managed WordPress hosting for high traffic websites.

Content delivery networks also will block and provide protection against bad web traffic such as brute attacks, malware and intrusions. All of this will help keep your website data safe online.

Security

The next step to see what to look for in a host is security. The security of your website is extremely important. Many shared hosting may not have such great security measures in place. It’s important because websites are exposed ever day to spam, hackers, DDoS attacks and more. With this said, you should create your website with a web hosting provider that protects you 24/7.

On Google’s blog in 2018 they announced how important it is to have SSL certificates. They are particularly important for websites that sell products on them. But also, Google states that SSL certificates help your SEO rankings. So I recommend that you use web hosting providers that give you them for FREE if you need them. Again, the web hosting providers that I mention in this post provider them tot you for FREE and they are super easy to install.

It’s also great to have a web hosting provider that performs daily backups of your website data. Of course, there are WordPress backup plugins that can install that will perform the same function. However, it’s great if the provider providers a copy of your site stored at the nearest data center that website can be restored within a few clicks.

Money Back Guarantee

Most web hosting providers online offer a money back guarantee of some kind. If not, they are not worth your time. A web host that gives a money back guarantee stands 100% behind their hosting services. I usually look for 30 day + offers being these give you more time to test and determine if it’s for you or not.

You will find online that some web hosting providers will extend longer than 30 days.

For example, Hostwinds and Pressidium offer clients a 60 day money guarantee.

Inomotion hosting mentioned above offers a 90 day money back guarantee while Dreamhost gives a 97 refund. However, Mochahost that costs $1.95/month knocks them all out of the park with a 180 day money back guarantee!

What I am getting at in this review is that money back guarantees is just one aspect of how to choose a web hosting service.

However, when it comes to money back guarantees on web hosting, A2 Hosting has the longest refund policy in the industry! They offer an ANYTIME refund policy and starts at only $2.99/month!

A Popular WordPress Web Hosting Suggestion for Beginners Online

The following banner of Bluehost is a highly recommended that you can visit personally by clicking them below. The banner will take you to the official page of that particular web hosting company to find out more details. There is a 30 day money back guarantee.

They have a Basic hosting plan that is great to create 1 website online. But if you want to create multiple websites on Bluehost, then their Plus hosting is better for this. So with the Plus hosting you will be able to add domains to create more websites easily in their cPanel.

Go ahead and give it a try and get 60% OFF today!

 What To Look For In A Web Host Conclusion 

Today I wanted to give you a brief overview of what to look for in a web host, it is impossible to tell you about all of the web hosting services or companies that are on the market because there are literally THOUSANDS of them.

I have given you a handful of reputable web hosting services to consider. All of these web hosts are reputable companies with great reviews & feedback online from other users online. They have great customer service, uptime performance, security and very affordable.

What do I recommend that you do now? Whether you are beginner or not, you should think about what resources you need will need for your website. Also, think about your personal monthly budget to pay for your web hosting services. All of the web hosting providers mentioned above have a long track record and will provide all of the tools needed to run your business online. All of the web hosts offer a money back guarantee which makes it 100% RISK-FREE.

Our website is hosted on Hostinger web hosting and has hosting starting at only $2.99/month! Get started creating your website today!