To make your website go online, you need a cheap web hosting provider. Thus, you need to find an appropriate one to optimize your website performance. With hundreds of cheap web hosting providers globally, it can be hard to select as every web host provides different products, support, features, and pricing options.
To narrow down your options, we have explained 5 steps below to find the best hosting service provider for your website. We will also share a few best elements and practices to consider while looking for an apt web host.
How To Find a Cheap Web Hosting Provider for Your Site?
Follow our step-by-step guide below to find the most suitable web host for your website:
Step 1: Understand your Site Requirements
Before you look for the best cheap web hosting service, it is essential to understand your website requirements to guide the search. Some factors you should consider here are:
Traffic: Estimate your potential web traffic to choose a host that can offer enough resources.
Project Scope: Determine the purpose of the website, whether it is a business page or a personal portfolio. A freelance website developer who works with small businesses needs more web hosting resources for creating multiple sites.
Platform: Think about how you wish to create the site by selecting between a hosted and self-hosted service. Find the web host who supports all web-creation tools you prefer.
Security: Consider the security level you’ll need for your site. Online stores, for example, require secure servers to protect the credit card information of clients.
Features: Check out the overall storage and bandwidth needed to run a website. Also check the web host’s scalability, so that your site has enough room to grow.
Budget: You should set your budget for choosing a cheap web hosting service. It will help manage long-term spending.
Understanding all these factors can help you well-informed decisions later.
Step 2: Research Different Hosting Providers and Compare Them
While comparing different cheap web hosting providers, ensure to check their genuineness. Thorough research is vital to save yourself from getting scammed because not every hosting provider offers reliable services. A few ways to find if a host is legitimate are:
Looking For Free Trial Options Or A Money-Back Guarantee: It allows you to try a web host service without any risk.
Checking Reviews: Search for reviews on reliable platforms.
Contacting Customer Support: Find if they have responsive customer support to address users’ problems quickly.
Step 3: Check The Website Host’s Features and Technology
After you shortlist a few cheap web hosting providers, compare their features and technology. Every host has its approach to boost your website’s performance. Before you choose a web host, you should consider researching the factors below:
Domain Name: The domain name is a vital element of a site. Find out if your chosen host provides domain name registration along with hosting to simplify your web-building procedure and select the best domain.
Migration Option: It is an excellent feature to have when looking to transfer the website host.
Data Centers: Select a web host having multiple server locations globally and check if it has any data center close to your location to guarantee low latency.
Email: Another great additional feature for online stores and business websites is to have a custom email as it boosts your credibility.
Step 4: Find a Dedicated Support
It is vital to have a dedicated and reliable support team ready to help you 24/7 fix all website-related problems instantly. Before you choose a web host, make sure that the host has various support options. Even if there are many kinds of support services, below are the main options to look for:
Email: It is excellent for non-urgent inquiries or issues. Customer services can fix a problem without replying immediately.
Live Chat: It is great for receiving quick responses. Most website hosts offer conversation transcripts to keep complete track of an issue and its progress.
Phone Call: For those who like explaining problems verbally can look for a website hosting service that provides phone support.
Blogs or Tutorials: Another feature of a trustworthy, cheap web hosting service is offering industry-related blog posts and tutorials. It is best for those who love to learn and independently resolve issues.
Knowledge Base: Besides talking directly to customer support representatives, check if a web hosting provider has an excellent knowledge base that answers all FAQs. It can be a helpful resource for beginners in web development.
Step 5: Find Out the Best Type of Web Hosting
Most website hosts provide different hosting services. Therefore, be sure to do complete research before you choose the best hosting plan. Consider the bandwidth, features, storage, and pricing. In addition, check if they offer managed or self-managed hosting.
There are different types of web hosting available these days. Every hosting type comes with its pros and cons. To find out which option will suit you and your website the best, let us have a look at the different types of hosting:
Shared Hosting
It is the best web host for low and medium-traffic websites, like personal blogs, portfolios, and small businesses. Multiple websites run with shared hosting and share all resources. Thus, any problems faced by other websites under the server can influence your site’s performance. Shared hosting is usually the most reasonably priced option and requires minimum technical knowledge. Most shared hosting service providers provide a beginner-friendly cPanel to help users handle their sites easily.
WordPress Hosting
The WP Content Management System can run on all web hosting services. But, WordPress hosting is mainly designed to enhance your website’s security and performance. Managed WP hosting is a great option when you’re sure about using the WP CMS. Most hosting providers take complete care of WP-related technical adjustments and updates. You should look for a WP hosting service that offers expert customer support. Additionally, the hosting service has pre-installed themes and plugins to accelerate the website-building procedure.
Dedicated Hosting
With a dedicated host, users can control an entire server and determine how many resources should they allocate and which software should they install. It is vital to have advanced technical knowledge to run online projects and websites using dedicated hosting. However, it is a bit more expensive than other types of hosting. Thus, dedicated hosting is usually appropriate for enterprise-level companies and large-scale projects, like an eCommerce store or online streaming service. Dedicated hosting management requires more work. Therefore, you should consider hiring a professional team and allocating a budget if you select this option.
VPS Hosting
With VPS Hosting, many users share the same server; however, with dedicated partitions. Thus, your site can have a secure and stable performance because of the allocated resources. An essential factor to consider with VPS web hosting is how much compatibility it is with your chosen operating system. It is a good choice for medium-sized sites as it’s the middle place between a dedicated and a shared server.
Cloud Hosting
For consistent uptime, it is the best website hosting service. With this, you can get more resources – by combining the trustworthiness and capacity of VPS hosting and the easiness of shared hosting. The web host leverages cloud technology to assign the loads of running a site to a cloud server’s virtual network. If a server gets down, another server can work in its place to always keep the site running. Cloud hosting is an excellent choice if you expect high web traffic. It works well for large and medium businesses who want to enhance their websites’ user experience and speed.
Wrap Up
Finding a cheap web hosting company for your websites can be difficult because there are many available options. We have already shared the vital step of choosing a cheap web hosting provider. From understanding the website requirements to choosing the best web host, all steps call for in-depth research.
So, to ease your selection process, below are a few vital elements to consider while finding a web host:
Bandwidth and Storage: The web host must offer enough resources to store your website files. An unmetered bandwidth can guarantee that your site can deal with high traffic.
Platform: Ensure that the web hosting service supports the platform using which you wish to create your website. Remember that if you are using a website builder, you don’t have to find a hosting provider separately.
Security: Ensure the hosting provider offers encryption methods, malware detection, and DDoS protection. Automated updates and backup services are also vital.
Optimization and speed: Underperforming servers can impact the loading time of your website, affecting its user experience and SEO negatively. So, you should find a hosting service that has optimized resources.
Simple Setup and Use: An easy-to-navigate and user-friendly interface can make managing your software, domains, and files simpler.
We think that you are familiar with the procedure of selecting a web hosting provider and can now make a well-informed decision to enhance your business.