You are proud of your website. You and a team of experts spent endless hours perfecting its content, visuals, call to actions and optimising user-experience. It is a masterpiece! All you need to do now is push it live with an optimal web hosting solution. Does it matter which hosting provider you choose?
Absolutely. Unless of course, you don’t want to attract new customers or leave a good impression, in which case any hosting will do.
But in all seriousness, think of the hosting you choose for your website as the “fuel” you’d give a brand new racing car. What you put in will directly affect what you get out.
Ask yourself how you would feel about a slow-to-load, poorly functioning website with obvious security vulnerabilities? You’ll probably exit the site within seconds, right?
Did you know that Google doesn’t really ‘think’ much of slow, unsecure hosting either? Websites with poor hosting will therefore rank lower than well-secured websites on reputable platforms.
Choose the right hosting partner and package by taking the time to investigate the following features:
Service & Support
Service and support are a lot more than just quick response rates, availability and easily accessible FAQs, although these are important too. It is also about providing customers with hosting packages that aim to please on all levels. Look at what is included in each package. A free domain? Free SSL? How much storage, email accounts, traffic allowances etc.?
Reviews
Every hosting company is going to tell you what you want to hear. So, listen to what their customers have to say. Find reviews on Google for business and read up on comments on social media to learn from others’ experiences.
Local hosting
Where is your target audience based? It is essential that your hosting company’s web hosting servers be located in the same country. If not, loading speeds will suffer tremendously. Other advantages of choosing local web hosting includes improved SEO, better, more timely support and of course, the knowledge that you are supporting a local business.
Speed & Uptime & Reliability
What do potential customers expect from a website? They expect a great experience. Full stop. In other words, they expect to find a fully functional website with excellent loading speeds. Look for hosting companies that make use of SSD servers and providers that guarantee a minimum of 99.9% uptime.
Backup
Backing up a website is critical. It protects your site from human error or incompatible updates.
Look for a hosting company that offers free daily backups and will be able to restore your website quickly should anything untoward happen.
Security
In 2021, everybody realises how critical internet security has become. Hackers make it their mission to find and exploit vulnerabilities in websites. Protect your website by choosing a reputable website hosting company that takes security seriously and can offer suitable products accordingly.
Infrastructure
Beware: Many smaller hosting providers, host websites on a desktop PC with a small server and other unsuitable hardware. Find out exactly what hardware and quality of data centre equipment they are providing hosting on before signing up.
What about price?
Price is a very misleading aspect, when weighing up suitable hosting providers. A very cheap hosting package likely has fewer features, an inferior infrastructure, weak support and backup. It is advisable to follow the above requirements and when confident with what your short-listed hosting companies will deliver, then compare pricing.
About Domains.co.za’s Web Hosting
All Domains.co.za’s web hosting packages are backed by a 99.9% Uptime Guarantee SLA. We have a proven track record in stability, security and reliability. We offer free daily backups and make use of SUPERFAST SSD Servers hosted in a Johannesburg-based N+1 Data Centre in Teraco, to bring our clients the best of the best in web hosting. We only use carrier-grade SuperMicro equipment, the same brand of servers that Amazon uses.
When it comes to website hosting, we believe it is important to offer our customers various options. Choose between Direct Access website hosting, Control Panel website hosting, WordPress Hosting, Email Only Hosting and VPS Hosting. Our comprehensive web hosting packages allow us to be the go-to hosting supplier to any size business, big or small.
Find the best hosting package for your exact needs by asking our experts. Click here to log a ticket.
