Once you’ve decided on the primary domain for your business, you will need to pick a company to host your domain on their servers. Searching “hosting company” in Google will give you about 50 million results, so I recommend starting with a short list. Check out a few comparative hosting review sites (making sure they’re legitimate sources), and select a few hosting companies that are consistently ranked high. Taking the top 3 options, you can then just compare which is a better value based on your needs.
One recent hosting comparison worth looking at was conducted by pcmag.com – The Best Web Hosting Services of 2015.
Hosting plans come in all shapes and sizes, which can make comparing and choosing the right hosting company even more difficult. The primary options for hosting plans include Shared, WordPress, VPS, and Dedicated. Among these options you will find segmented offerings like Personal, Business, and Enterprise that will let you upgrade features like the ability to host multiple domains, enhanced performance, and greater storage capacity.
- Shared Hosting – As cheap as $2 per month, shared hosting is a great option for most businesses just getting started, especially if you only need to host one domain. Essentially, you are allocated some space alongside other companies in a shared server.
- Pros – cheapest option for hosting, and good value considering pre-installed software available
- Cons – least secure, vulnerable based on practices of other sites on the server, and lower bandwidth threshold, so site more likely to crash at high volume of visits or heavy utilization of graphic intensive applications – such as hosting your own HD videos
- WordPress Hosting – Usually priced in between standard shared and vps plans, WordPress optimized plans usually streamline the WordPress site setup process, provide enhanced security over standard shared plans, and hide many of the scary backend features for Webmasters not familiar and not wanting to get familiar with cPanel and similar site admin interfaces.
- Pros – very efficient site administration if only interested in working with WordPress, and more secure that standard shared hosting
- Cons – more cost-effective option to use host that offers “one-click installs” to get setup with WordPress on a shared server
- VPS Hosting – An intermediate option between shared and dedicated servers, VPS stands for Virtual Private Server, and provides an excellent balance of bandwidth and security for the price.
- Pros – at around $30/month good value for dedicated server resources and security, cheapest option compatible with SSL encryption
- Cons – may not be sufficient if you expect a very high volume of visits and/or plan on hosting performance draining applications
- Dedicated Server – Best of the best, you get your own server maintained and protected by experts in a secure, climate controlled facility.
- Pros – sky’s the limit performance and security
- Cons – starting at around $150/month, this option may break your bank
Customer Service – Can you count on them?
When your website crashes or has been hacked (I’ve had both happen to me), you don’t want to waste hours (or days) stressing out, losing business or readers because your hosting company’s customer service department isn’t capable. Most hosting companies will offer at least a 30 day money back guarantee. Test out their customer service to make sure they’ll be there for you in your time of need. If they’re eager and able to help you with some simple setup questions, it’s not a sure thing they can handle a catastrophic event with your website, but it’s more probable. If you have a negative experience with basic setup issues, abandon ship, find a new host. Consult with the new host about pointing your domain to the new host.
Domain Registration – Cash in on the Promo
Ready to pull the trigger? Every web hosting company offers one free domain registration for the first year. If you’re transferring a site from another host, unfortunately you won’t be able to reap any benefits here. In addition to the 1 year domain registration you may also want to consider privacy protection. New domains need to be registered with ICANN, an international regulating body for website domains. Privacy protection lists the hosting company’s default domain registrar info instead of your personal info, and by doing so shields your personal information from spammers. Note that if you will need to run SSL encryption on your site, you cannot use privacy protection.