11 things to consider before buying a web hosting service.

Choosing a good web host is very critical to your business. Although it can be a time consuming thing, but it is worth it. If you want to learn about web hosting business, we have a web hosting guide for you. IndiStart has done some research for you and you can consider these 11 things before you buy a web hosting service. Here they are:- 

• Drive used- This may sound irrelevant but this is a very important thing to consider. Most good host are providing SSD drives as an upgrade or included with the plan. Prefer SSD drives to conventional ones. SSD drives are much faster and hence improve the performance of your website drastically. Web hosting services like Inmotion  have SSD included even in Shared hosting.  

•  Scalable:- If your web business grows {and it should}, can you easily upgrade it?  This should be a key factor while selecting the web host. Ask the support how can you scale your business. If they say that they are “future ready” you can consider the host else remove it from your short list immediately!                                                                                                                                        
• Support:- The most obvious yet the most important. Have a keen observation on the time it takes to connect to the sales chat. If you think that the time taken is too much in sales chat, it will be an obvious thing that the support would be more slower. Many web hosting companies come with managed support included with plans like VPS & dedicated. For e.g. Liquid Web has industry leading managed support.                                                                                                                        
• Contract:- You might check the “I Agree” button readily on any website but this should not be done with web host. There are many web hosts which “play games” and you may end up feeling cheated with the tricks used. Once you give money, it could be difficult to take it back and this might create further issues. Readily check if the contract serves your purpose.                                                                                                                                                                                                   
• Uptime:- Imagine flaunting your website in front of your colleagues or friends or potential investors and the site opens a page saying – “Database error” or “Server Error”. Or even imagine that you spend money to send people to your website and they see such pages. All the hard work an money gets drained right away.                                                                                         Moreover, a customer who got such a bad experience with your website may not return to your site again. Ever! So it would be very important to use a service which provided the best uptime as possible.                                                                                                                                                                          
• Price:- This is very obvious thing. Same service could come with very different price tags. For instance a typical VPS may cost $20 a month at one host while almost same configuration may be priced at $75 a month on another website. So it is essential to go a through market research before buying a web hosting.                                                                                                                                   
• Backups:- This may not be sounding important or exciting but a small bug in your website can contaminate the whole site. Even adding an out dated plugin can “kill” the site. Having a backup plan is always beneficial. In many cases it is a lifeline for businesses. There are many web hosts that provide free backups. Check if the web host you are looking does that!                                                                                                                                                                                                           
• Tools included:- There should be some tools & software included with the packages. This makes life easier. For instance tools like one-click install helps to install important CMS very quickly. This could save hours of your hard work.                                                                                           
• Freebies:- Freebies are included with most plans in web hosting. Go for websites that give you good amount of freebies. For e.g. shared hosting with InMotion can get you freebies like free backups, free website transfer, free website builder & free application installer. Why pay more when good things are already available for free?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     
• Ratings & Reviews:-  Read reviews from multiple websites about the web host you are planning to buy. It is also important to ensure that you read reviews from genuine sources. Many review websites provide paid reviews. Buying web hosting services from such providers can be catastrophic for your business. Most of the hosts recommended on IndiStart are either tested or researched.                                                                                                                                                   
• Transfers:-  A very very important thing to know if you are transferring your web hosting provider. Doing the transfer manually can be very time consuming as well as risky affair. It is highly recommended to have the website transferred by expert. There are some websites that provide free transfers, other charge. Find the host which has good reviews of transfer of websites with zero downtime.