Choosing a web hosting service provider is a major decision since it is a vital foundation to ensure that your business is successful. With a leading web host, you can highly improve the performance of your website. Choosing wrongly will lead to a waste of your money and cause you a headache.
There are several factors to consider when looking for a web host. These include your website’s requirements, the web host’s server reliability or uptime scores, the flexibility of their plans, signup and renewal pricing, free trials and refund policy, quality of customer support, backups offered for your website and server speed and responsiveness.
Besides these, there can be many other things to keep in mind. Here are some specific factors to tick off when opting for a web host with respect to the features they offer.
Fast and Secure
See whether the web host offers the following features to ensure that your site runs fast and is protected:
- Free premium Cloudflare CDN service
- Reduced server latency
- Free SSL certificates for website security
- Added protection from DDoS attacks
- Malware detection
- Automated security updates
24/7 Customer Support
Check whether the web hosting service provider has in-house professional experts who offer 24/7 customer support and help through calls and chat. You can also look for guides and video tutorials from the help centre.
Money-Back Guarantee
See if the web host offers a refund within 30 days of signing up if you don’t like their services. This will show that they prioritise your satisfaction the most.
Free Benefits
A top web host offers free cPanel, SSL, Premium Cloudflare CDN and 1-year domain for all kinds of hosting plans. Often, they also offer unlimited bandwidth and SSD storage and parked domains on some plans. Look for these facilities.
Unique Website Templates
Check if the web host offers stunning yet unique website templates to help your site stand out. The provider should offer access to multiple website themes, both free and premium. This can help you choose one based on your brand appeal.
Website Customisation
Very few website builders allow you to creatively customise your site with flexible designs to suit your brand. Look for this benefit as well.
Powerful Plugins
Check whether the web host offers customer chat windows, fully customisable online stores, secure payment gateways and other important plugins to equip your site for maximum performance.
An Efficient Dashboard
Most importantly, the web host must offer a highly efficient dashboard to manage multiple functions and clients. These include tracking user comments, visitor analytics and other activities on your site right from your dashboard.
Look for a dashboard handcrafted for web developers and designers to manage your clients with:
- The ability to create effective invoices to bill clients
- 1-click hosting configuration using cPanel
- 1-click access to the WordPress panel
Also, see whether the provider offers all types of hosting services like shared hosting, VPS hosting and WordPress hosting at reasonable prices. You can avail shared hosting in India if you are on a budget and don’t expect high volumes of traffic. If you wish to have better features, you can switch to any of the other hosting plans.