Are you ready to take your small business online and get your website up and running? That’s great! Of course, that means you’ll need to find a way to host your website before you can get started.
Unfortunately, with 330,000 website hosts out there, it can be challenging to find the right company for the job.
Keep the things below in mind when looking for the best web hosting providers for small businesses.
Support Services
Even the best hosting isn’t perfect. Sometimes software and hardware will fail. That will cause your website to go offline.
The question is, do you have the knowledge to get things up and running again on your own?
If not, you need to get in touch with your hosting support to get things running again. If you work with unresponsive small business web hosts, there’s no telling how long that will take.
Look online at customer reviews to see how responsive a company is before buying their services. Ideally, you should be able to get them on the phone quickly if you have an emergency with your site.
If you have a less critical issue, a customer service ticket will work. However, you still shouldn’t wait more than a day to get a response from your hosting company.
Backups
Whether it’s because of a hard drive failure, hacking attempt, or software update, there’s always the chance that your website files become corrupted. The problem with this is that it’s challenging to get things back up and running when you don’t have an old copy of your site. This is where a website backup helps.
Web hosting services for small businesses should offer reliable and flexible backup options for their customers.
If you don’t update your site often, then a monthly backup will work fine. However, if you update your website several times every week, a daily backup will make sure your backup is useful.
Ideally, you should be able to restore your backup with a few clicks of a button. Check the support section for a web host to see how they handle backups and if those options work for your needs.
Specialized Services
Shared hosting is great if you want to get your site online on a budget. You only pay a few dollars per month, but you don’t get specialized services as a result. If you know what web software you’ll use, don’t hesitate to look at specialized hosting services.
Take WordPress, for instance. There is a specific web server configuration that helps WordPress websites operate at their best. That’s why many companies specialize in WordPress sites.
Of course, specialized web hosts cost more than standard shared hosting. Weigh your options to decide if it’s worth paying more money for specialized services.
SSL Support
Having a secure site is more critical today than ever. Cybercrime is continuing to rise, so you can’t afford to take security lightly. That’s why Google is starting to look at SSL certificates as a minor ranking factor.
This is especially important if you work with sensitive customer information. If you work with an eCommerce store or another site that captures data, it’s your obligation to use SSL to secure the transport of that information.
Luckily, SSL doesn’t cost much anymore. The LetsEncrypt service provides free SSL certificates. Most web hosting for small business now offers this option and lets you set up your certificate with a few clicks of a button.
Root Access
Not all web applications are simple HTML or WordPress websites. In these cases, you might need special software installed on your server to get your site running. Unfortunately, this isn’t always possible with shared web hosting platforms for small businesses.
If you want to make unique modifications to your web server, you’ll need root access to make this happen. You’ll need a VPS at a minimum.
Most hosting providers offer a VPS as an upgraded hosting plan for companies. These plans cost more but provide more resources and customization than shared hosting plans.
Of course, you’ll need to do more to manage your server if you buy an unmanaged VPS. If you want to do a little customization yourself and still have your host manage your server, make sure you sign up for a managed VPS plan.
Scalable Plans
Even if a small resource hosting plan works for your site initially, there’s no guarantee that things will stay that way in the future. Your goal is to grow your website and get a lot of visitors. If you don’t have the server resources to handle a lot of traffic, your site will go offline a lot of the time.
The last thing you want is to spend a lot of time moving servers every time this happens. Your host should offer upgraded computer hardware with a few clicks of a button to make this process as seamless as possible.
You need to look for both server hardware and bandwidth when making this decision. You can have enough server resources to handle jumps in bandwidth but still have your site go offline if your website host limits the traffic you can receive.
Take Your Time When Looking for Web Hosting for Small Businesses
The last thing you want is to spend a lot of time and money creating a website, only to have it go offline and not come back up. If you don’t find the right web hosting for small businesses, that’s exactly what will happen.
Keep the above things in mind to help you find the right company for the job.
Your work isn’t done once you get your site up and running. Head back to our blog to learn everything you need to know about how to keep your website running.