The next step after selecting a web hosting provider who will host your website is to select the most suitable hosting package from what they offer. But before making this decision, there are a number of considerations to make that are important to the smooth running and operation of a website.
The purpose of this article is to guide you through the selection process when choosing the best suited hosting package for your website.
Why are web hosting packages so important for my website?
Selecting a hosting provider is only half the work done. What remains now is to select a suitable package for your website from what they have to offer. This is crucial for your website because it has a direct impact of the performance and stability of your website.
Before you settle for any web hosting package, it is important to properly analyze whether the selected package has all features necessary for hosting your website. This is in terms of reliability, performance, upgrade options, control panel, refund policy, and customer support.
To do this, you will have to compare your website’s needs to what is provided under the said package. This will save you from a lot of trouble and frustration in the future.
The following are what you need to consider when assessing the needs of your website:
1. Price of service quality?
If you are looking for cheap hosting packages that give you the ability of hosting several websites for a few dollars, be aware that your websites will not have good performance and stability. This is because hosting resources are shared equally among all websites hosted on the web server.
Another thing that you should be aware of is that if you can get hosting cheaply, it is most probable that your website’s performance and other features are being limited. Therefore, if you want to run a website seriously, then you should not give priority to the price but rather the features and quality of service that you get.
2. What is your website’s purpose?
When choosing a web hosting package for your website, it is important to consider the purpose of the website you want to host. You need to have a clear idea of the exact purpose of creating the website.
If you are building a website so that you can showcase your portfolio and resume, a high-cost web hosting package is not a good option because it will be a loss of money. However, if you are creating a dynamic website that will be visited by thousands of visitors, then a high cost hosting package is a good idea because you will get optimum website performance.
3. How much web traffic do you expect?
Another factor that you should consider when choosing a web hosting package is the amount of traffic you expect your site to receive. Normally, a site does not get much traffic when starting out and so a basic plan that can handle little traffic can suffice.
When your website grows and your monthly traffic increases too, you can now upgrade your hosting plan. Good news is that most web hosting providers allow you to upgrade between hosting plans without your website experiencing any downtime.
However, if you want to transfer your website from one hosting provider to another, you should take the time to do a traffic estimation before you select a web hosting package. A good tool that you can use to calculate approximate traffic for your website is Google Analytic.
If your website receive massive daily traffic, it is better for you if you find a web hosting package that has enough CPU, RAM, and storage space resources.
4. Which website platform will you use?
Your web platform is one of the most important considerations to make before choosing a web hosting package for your website. This simply means the software or script that your website will be built on. It is an important consideration because you will need to install this script onto your web host so that your website is online. The script therefore has to be supported by your host provider.
- For blogging: WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and others are the preferred scripts by most web masters.
- For support/discussion forums: Xenforo, vBulletin, and phpBB are the preferred options.
You therefore need to be sure that the script you want to use is compatible with your web hosting package.
Fortunately, most web hosts mention the scripts that are compatible with their systems. However, if you would want to install a custom script that is not listed, it would be better to contact your web host provider first via phone, chat, or email.
5. How many websites do you want to host?
The number of websites that you plan on hosting is another important consideration to make before you settle for any web hosting package. If you will host more than one website, you should find a package that allows you to install several domains.
Normally, this option will be displayed under “add-on domains”. All hosting that you buy has a primary domain and therefore, additional domains that you will host are called “add-on domains”. If your web host provider allows you to host up to 3 add-on domains, this means you can host up to 4 websites (1 primary and 3 add-on domains).
For each domain, you need a separate database and user. You should therefore confirm that your package allows you to create these additional resources.
6. Does the hosting package have all important features?
Before completing the purchase, confirm that the web hosting package you are about to buy has all the vital features you need for smooth management and operation of your website.
Some of these include database support, a control panel (most preferably cPanel), shell access, corn jobs, automatic backup, one-click script installation, and DNS management.
Conclusion
If you are not careful when selecting a suitable web hosting package for your website that is based on your needs and requirements, you may end up being frustrated in future. This is the sole reason we advocate on the quality of the hosting package rather than the price.
Additionally, make sure that your website is fully compatible with the features in you selected web hosting package so as to avoid compatibility issues in future.
Hi Dung, Very nicely phrased guide for choosing the best web hosting packages. I agree when selecting a suitable web hosting is not easy. We must make sure that our website is fully compatible with the features of the hosting selected. I took all these points into consideration and now I use the most reliable and fast WordPress hosting for my blogs.
Great suggestion dear! With all the companies out there each promising to have 99% uptime, unlimited resources, and knowledgeable support, so it can be tough to choose the right web hosting company. I would recommend these tips to everyone.