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Lesson 4: How to Choose Your Server or Web Host

Tip 4: How to Choose Your Server or Web Host

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Last Updated: 1 year ago by BrodNeil

Shalom,

Congratulations again and thank you for making this far.  You are now in tip 4.  By this time, you should be well aware that you are now taking a big step to host your domain and have it LIVE into a website.  I hope tip 3 has answered some of the basic questions and would help you decide on how to choose a domain name for your business.

These are the past tips that we’ve shared.  May they be applicable to your needs:

Every website needs a domain and a web host/server.  Just as every bookstore needs a business name and a premises (physical space to sell books), your website needs a domain to serve as your business name and a web host/server to store the services, products, and information of your business.

Here are the basic things I’d personally look into when choosing a web host / server:

  1. Uptime Reliability: Uptime is a measure of the time a server has been available or working. It is the opposite of downtime.  A high uptime means more reliability or stability.  Uptime reliability represents the time a server can be left unattended without crashing or needing to be rebooted that is for administrative or maintenance purposes.
  2. Load time and Cloud Feature: Page load time indicates how long it takes for a page to fully load in the browser after a user clicks a link or makes a request. This is important as it directly impacts the user’s experience and engagement and ultimately your business’s bottom line. There are many factors affecting a page load time, one factor is your server. Though many times a poor load time is caused by how a website is built or designed, it is wise to make sure your server has a good load time.  If your server has or can easily integrate with a cloud feature, this is a big plus. The cloud computing feature is the practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet and can therefore hasten your page load time.
  3. Customer Support:  2 things I would like to look into when it comes to customer support: the expertise and the politeness.  Who wants a knowledgeable, but rude client support; nor will someone want a very polite and courteous support with very poor knowledge on the issues.
  4. Email Feature: Ability to add unlimited email addresses. Ease and convenience in adding emails in Gmail and third-party mail clients.
  5. Backup Feature: Check how often they back up, how many back up folders are stored, and for how long are they keeping them.  All these are important when you need to restore a backup especially on a very untimely manner.
  6. HTTPs or SSL:  Availability of a free HTTPs or SSL certificate, which will do for most websites.
  7. Auto-script Installer: Easy to install scripts (like Softaculous) for WordPress, Joomla, Magento, and the like.
  8. Pricing on both registration and renewal: Check if there are no hidden costs in registration or sign up. Check also if prices do change upon renewal.
  9. Staging Environment/Feature: This is one feature why I love SiteGround. Your site visitors shouldn’t see the experiments you are making on your website. Worse, if they can see your website break when developing a new feature. The staging environment is a feature every server should have.
    • Have you experienced a WP site that breaks after updating theme or plugin? This is one good example why a staging environment is important.  By a click of a button, you can copy your site into a staging environment and update the plugin/theme from there.  Once everything is fine, you can simply PUSH it back LIVE.
    • A Staging environment is also good for experimenting new WP features before having them LIVE.
    • If you have an existing website and you plan to make new one, the staging environment can come very handy.
    • Note the ease of having a staging feature compared to doing them manually on a subdomain or local computer.
  10. Caching Feature: Another reason why I love SiteGround.  Its caching feature can increase the number of hits a website can handle; it also helps the loading speed of the website.
  11. Dedicated for WordPress: And since we are to use WordPress for our websites in this series of Internet marketing tutorial, I highly recommend a server and a customer support who knows well about WordPress.
    • MediaServe (We are very new to this web host company. However, of all that we’ve tried, this is top-notch. It is supported by a biblically minded family company in business since 1999. Therefore, you are dealing with the business owner and support is great.)
    • SiteGround is one of those dedicated to WordPress.
    • GreenGeeks is another WordPress optimized hosting. This is a choice for those who opt to go eco-friendly.

My Preference

Start small, then scale up later as needed.

Budget

Around US$10-30/month.

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