How to choose a web Hosting provider

Picking a good Hosting Provider boils down to three S’s — speed, support and security. For good measure, scale may be another S-word to ponder.

What’s important in a hosting provider?

“Great hosting boils down to the 3 S’s: speed, support and security,” said Adam Berry, digital director at Wingard Creative. Nasdaq’s Simon Ball, head of digital media services at Nasdaq Corporate Solutions, said scalability is also critical. “You need the ability to rapidly scale your website as your target audience grows and the resiliency to handle sudden bursts of high traffic,” said Ball.

Hosting services are available in a wide range of prices ranging from a few dollars a month to thousands of dollars. If you’re a small business getting started, you can probably do quite well with a cloud, virtual private server, or managed service ranging from $10 to $100 (roughly £8 to £80 or AU$15 to AU$130) per month.

Decide how much hand-holding you’ll need. Basic customer service provides access to email, ticket and phone support. Turnaround time on requests, however, will vary. Some service providers even offer 24-hour phone support. The limiting factor to non-managed service is that while a vendor may answer questions about basic configuration, it won’t be your systems manager.

If you want to delegate the management of your site completely, then you want to consider managed service. Providers of managed service will make sure your system is configured properly for your load, keep an eye on security issues, patch your software as needed and manage backups among other tasks.

Estimate the amount of traffic you expect (and be honest with yourself). Hosting providers generally charge based on storage and bandwidth usage. Bandwidth is a measure of how many bytes you serve over a given period. If you expect only a few folks to visit your site, bandwidth will be low. But if you’re suddenly featured at the top of Google or your product goes viral you can expect bandwidth requirements to surge.

As long as you’re honest with yourself, there’s not much of a risk. For example, if you plan to only serve a few pages to a few local customers, you’ll never run afoul of any limits. But if you know that you’re really building a site that will stress low-end shared servers, be sure to pick a dedicated or cloud-based server. That’s next.

Understand server types. The very cheapest hosting is available on shared servers, where one box may run hundreds of websites. The performance of your site depends on the load all the other sites are putting on the host. Shared hosting also limits your access to the server’s capabilities, generally limiting you to uploading files via FTP or SFTP, preventing shell access, restricting what programs you can run on the service and limiting the amount of database access your site can perform.

The next tier up is VPS (for virtual private server), which is a full instance of a virtual machine (a simulated computer) running on a box. Usually, hosting providers run many VPS instances on one box, but performance is almost always better than base-level shared services. If you use a VPS, you should be familiar with basic server maintenance and management.

If you don’t want to share performance with other sites, consider a dedicated server, a physical box that’s rented to you. It’s the same as having a server sitting behind your desk, except it’s located in a service provider’s data center. Only those with system management skills need apply.

Cloud servers may be a better choice. They usually run on the giant public clouds, like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure. Service providers can build whatever configuration suits the needs of their customers. The big benefit of cloud servers is that you can scale seamlessly. If you need to be able to handle that big traffic surge, just pay your provider more money. Nothing needs to be moved or rebuilt.

Be wary of unlimited offers. Some hosting providers offer so-called unlimited storage and bandwidth for a few dollars a month. This deal often isn’t what it seems to be. If you pay three bucks a month for hosting, there will likely be something in your terms of service allowing your hosting provider to either throttle your performance or shut you down after a certain usage level.

Choose a portable content management system to avoid lock-in. Most hosts are pretty good, but times change. Management changes, acquisitions and technology shifts can alter your web hosting plans. Make sure your site isn’t locked to any one host — and that you have a backup practice in place.

For my business, I make sure I use an open source content management system. Many people use WordPress on top of PHP, which will run on just about anything. Do regular updates and site backups, so you always have access to your site’s data, media and structure. This approach means all you need to do is load your backup on another provider’s service and point your domain name to that provider.

Own your domain name. Nicholas Rubright, founder and CEO of streaming music service Dozmia, recommends that all fledgling businesses own their domains. “Make sure you own the domain. That way you can change providers if needed, and own any earned SEO benefits,” said Rubright.

Now that you know how to get your site up onto the internet, you’re all set to get started. Go forth and build something great. but the next thing that is very Vital In Web Hosting is Security, Data Safety

One of the most vital element is the ‘Security’. Lack of security not only results in a business loss but also losing information and data as well. Henceforth it is important to understand what parts of security you should opt for and how to decide whether your web host provider gives security satisfactorily.

Why you need Security?

The Internet is reachable to each and every one and with time it is becoming a popular mean of running a business. At whatever point there is a probability of exploiting a system for the pick-up of unsavory individuals, it will endeavor. The Internet is ready for the taking and crooks will attempt many ways to deal with getting what they need.

There are actually billions of dollars that backpedal and forward on the Internet and if these assets can be redirected to a criminal, at that point they will endeavor it. This is the reason buyers are so worried about security and why you should take a gander at security as an essential concern while picking a web host.

From whom you are protecting your website from?

There are basically two sorts of individuals who are out to do damage to your website. The most widely recognized and most debilitating is the identity thief. This is the individual who searches for a chance to accumulate data for personal gain. This kind of criminal is frequently a working in a stealth limit.

Their attempt to continue to get unnoticed for a long period of time to increase the number of victims they can access.

Not every person who is out to hurt your website is attempting to take from you. There are many programmers who basically hope to cause interruption. When you are the casualty of one of these programmers it can injure your site causing delayed downtime and lost incomes. They ordinarily wreak destruction for their own fun or to demonstrate to themselves they can cripple an association and they normally work in an attempt at manslaughter mode. They regularly put “graffiti” on the site, changing the page to tell you they were there.

While hunting down a new web hosting provider or assessing the security of your own host here are a few things to consider:

SFTP – If you have ever uploaded documents to your hosting account you are likely acquainted with FTP (File Transfer Protocol). You utilize a FTP customer to drag your files to where you need them to be uploaded and they will be distributed to your account. SFTP is a similar idea however it is more secure. SFTP stands for Secure File Transfer Protocol and it gives an extra layer of assurance. FTP, while genuinely secure, is as yet defenseless. Files can be blocked and even changed with next to zero sign. SFTP shuts this powerlessness. Check to ensure this alternative is accessible to you by means of your web have.

Backups – Backups ought to be performed routinely keeping in mind the end goal to ensure your site if there should be an occurrence of an issue or fiasco. Most of the host gives an apparatus in the control panel that enables you to back up your own particular site. This ought to be done and you shouldn’t depend on your host to do as such. In any case, a host that has offered good backup steps is always a plus. Verify how regularly the host back up their servers, what technique they utilize and where backups are put away.

Server support – The web host should ensure the server is sufficiently kept up to guarantee attacks are constrained. Verify whether the host has a published security protocol on which is a decent sign that they are over updates and fixes.

SSL – SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. SSL gives a scrambled way between the browser and web server. You can tell if a SSL certificate is being used with the sign of a bolted lock image on the address bar alongside the utilization of https://in they deliver rather than http://. If you run an E-commerce site a SSL authentication is a need. It will help keep client data from being stolen. Visa or keeping money numbers, name, address and other individual data will stay secure. At whatever point you have to assemble individual, delicate data a SSL declaration is an absolute necessity.

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