Choosing a Web Hosting Company: Guide for Beginners

If it’s your first time creating a website or an online blog, you must be searching for the cheapest web hosting company in UK, if that’s where you’re located.

While it’s important to keep your budget and affordability in view when choosing a hosting company, there are many other features that you should consider as well.

In this article, we’ve written down some expert tips for beginners on how to choose a web host, what features should a hosting plan include, and why is it so important to buy quality hosting.  

So, let’s get into it!

What’s Web Hosting?

Here’s a scenario:

You’re a business owner in UK and want to reach customers globally or sell online to local customers.

In any case, you’d need a website that is accessible to users online.

A web hosting provider in UK would offer you storage space on a web server where you can store your website and its files.

Once you have your website hosted on a server, your customers would be able to access it simply by typing in your registered domain name or URL in their browsers.

The amount of storage space you get depends on the type of hosting and the hosting package you buy. So, you really need to assess your needs before purchasing a hosting plan, but more on that later.

Your initial step should be to choose the right hosting company, and we’re here to guide you through that.

Why Choose the Best Web Hosting Company in UK?

The quality of user experience your online customers receive depends largely on the quality of your chosen web hosting services.

While most web hosts promise 99.9% uptime and fast loading speed, not every company stands true to its claims. Low-quality hosting can cause your site to become inaccessible to users because it might go “down” way too often.

If a search spider crawls through your site while it’s down, your search engine rankings would have to face a downfall as well, which would ultimately affect a huge part of your digital marketing efforts.

All of this can further lead to a loss of potential customers, lesser sales, and decreased revenue generation.

And even after the issue has been resolved, your site may have to stay way down in the search results because of decreased domain authority.

In addition to all these risks, scamming is another reason why you should only choose the best web hosting company in UK.

So, make sure to look for reviews online, read the testimonials on their site, and ask previous customers about their experience before buying from a hosting provider.

Features to Look for in a Web Hosting Company

When it comes to looking for a web hosting company in UK, you’d be faced with a lot of different choices.

In addition to the numerous large and reputable companies, there are many small and much more affordable hosting companies that you can find in UK.

But, how would you know about the quality of their services? Afterall, you can’t risk your website’s performance, right?

Here’re some features to look for in a web hosting company:

1. Speed, Speed, Speed

Speed is one of the major performance metrics that must be monitored by all website owners.

Why?

Firstly, because your site’s page load speed directly impacts your search engine rankings.

Secondly, slow loading sites can cause customers to leave before making a purchase, hence increasing your bounce rate and bringing down your revenue generation. In a sense, all the money you invested on purchasing a domain name, getting your website developed, and optimizing it for SEO, would be good for nothing if the site is slow.

In addition to this, a fast-loading site keeps the visitors satisfied and happy, which is likely to increase your rate of conversions.

Remember that your website is like your sales agent – it needs not to be just engaging and attractive, but also fairly efficient.

So, when you’re choosing a web hosting company in UK, ensure that they can make all your site pages load at a blazing-fast speed.

Have a look at these site speed statistics:

2. Bandwidth and Data Transfer Limitations

You may think that bandwidth and data transfer limitations are both the same thing, but there’s actually a slight difference.

In plain words, the throughput of the line on which your website is hosted is called bandwidth. If you purchase a plan with high bandwidth, you’d be able to serve lots of customer request and maintain the speed of your site even at times when you’re receiving huge web traffic.

On the other hand, data transfer refers to the amount of data that you can upload on your website in a month.

Many hosts put limitations on the amount of data that a user can transfer in order to ensure that no one over-utilises the connection.

However, if you choose a top web hosting company in UK, you can always purchase a plan with ‘unlimited’ bandwidth and data transfer and enjoy great performance at all times.

3. Reliable Services

Another important thing to consider before purchasing a hosting plan is the reliability of your chosen web hosting company in UK.

Have a look at the reviews of previous customers. Are they happy with the services they’re getting? Do you see a lot of complaints? Does the company respond to the issues faced by their customers?

If you want a good experience, make sure your chosen web hosting provider in UK is ready and willing to offer one. Always pick a host that you can depend on.

4. The Uptime Guarantee

After reliability, uptime guarantee is the next thing to be kept in mind.

You’d probably already know what uptime means. In case you don’t, it refers to the amount of time for which your website is live. And that should be always, right?

With a good web host, one who guarantees 99.9% uptime, your site may only go down once in a while, and that too for a short time period.

On the other hand, if you haven’t purchased quality web hosting, there can be an increase in the amount of downtime faced by your website due to several reasons, including hardware issues, storage failures, monitoring gaps, etc.

Too much downtime can cause your customers to become frustrated and may harm your search engine rankings as well. So, choose wisely when it comes to web hosting companies in UK.

5. Proper Website Security

Honestly, you don’t want to work with a hosting company that has fragile server and poor security. There’re hackers and spammers always ready to pounce on websites that aren’t properly secured and continuously monitored.

Your sensitive data can be stolen and misused.

Don’t want this nightmare to turn into reality?

Pick a host that knows how to keep their clients’ data and websites safe with 24/7 security monitoring.

Some of the top hosting companies also offer weekly backup services that can help you sleep peacefully at night, knowing that your business won’t be impacted even in case of accidental website data loss.

6. Easy-to-Use Control Panel

If you’re going for an unmanaged web hosting plan, make sure the technical stuff wouldn’t be too complicated or difficult to manage for you.

Web hosting agencies that’re an official partner of cPanel are your best bet.

cPanel is the most easy-to-use control panel out there. It allows you to manage your website easily and without much hassle so you can stay focused on managing your business.

It’s also quite user-friendly and easy to understand for beginners, so you can handle pretty much everything on your site effortlessly.

7. Flexible and Easily Upgradable Hosting Plans

As your website and business grows, your hosting needs might change. Migrating your website to another place can be a long process and way too complicated. Which means, the web hosting company in UK that you choose should offer flexible plans that can be upgraded with ease.

In addition to this, in case your hosting needs reduce, your web host must allow you to downgrade the plan without any sort of penalty whatsoever.

8. Advanced Customer Support

This is an important one.

Whether it’s your website facing downtime, the loading speed isn’t up-to-the-mark, or you have any query related to website management, who would you contact?

Obviously, your web host. Right?

What if they’re not available to assist you in case of such an emergency?

You can’t just sit and wait until the next business day.

So, pick the best web hosting company in UK – one with a team of customer support representatives who’re always ready to assist you at any time during the day.

Also, ensure that your host is easy to reach. As in, you should be able to contact them via phone call, email, and live chat as well.

9. Fairly Priced Plans

All web hosting companies have their own pricing structures. Shared hosting plans tend to be cheaper as compared to most other packages because the resources of a single server are shared among multiple users.

On the other hand, VPS and dedicated server plans can be quite expensive, but they also offer better website performance, speed, security, and storage. Plus, a with dedicated server, you can have a controlled hosting environment that you can manage yourself.

What’s the ideal hosting plan for beginners?

After you’ve chosen a web hosting company in UK, the best approach is to analyse your needs. If your website is small and doesn’t receive too much traffic, a shared hosting plan can work perfectly. Whereas, you might need to view the business hosting, VPS, and dedicated server plans if you require more speed, security, and optimum performance.

All in all, pick a top hosting company in UK, and choose a plan that fits your needs!

By Websouls Content Team - 16 Oct 2020