Thinking that web hosting is a commodity like electricity or gas is a big mistake. The simple fact is that web hosting has a lot of moving parts, and they all need to work in harmony to deliver a high quality, uninterrupted service. Choosing a low cost host might seem like a rational choice but in fact it could be a false economy due to the harm that it can cause your business.
What are your website load times?
Load speed is important for a number of reasons. Primarily, because faster loading websites offer a better user experience than slow ones. Put simply, people hate waiting for a page to load.
Google understands this, and that's why it specifically state that site speed is one of the variables that it measures as part of its overall search algorithm.
Speeding up your website can get expensive and takes time. But one area where you can get fast results is the type of web hosting you choose.
Do you have noisy neighbors?
The thing is that if your host is offering as much diskspace and bandwidth as you need for just a couple of bucks a month then guess what? You’re not alone on that server.
Your host isn’t going to publicize it, but there will always be people on that type of offer who will still be pushing the envelope as far as they can.
A small minority of noisy neighbors will be hogging the server’s key resources and often having a detrimental impact on the server’s performance.
What's the IP reputation?
If the server you are hosted on is detected sending spam or hosting malware then the chances are that it’s IP address is going to get blacklisted. That’s bad news for you because that can affect a range of factors from email deliverability to your search ranking.
One of the primary reasons for getting blacklisted is that other clients on the same server as you may be running insecure applications or out-of-date software. This isn’t necessarily done with malicious intent on their part. It’s usually just an oversight or a lack of understanding.
Do you have sluggish performance during peaks?
If you’re hosted on a shared server, and you’ve got a busy ecommerce website then maybe you’re starting to notice sluggish performance at peak times or during busy seasonal periods.
If so the chances are that your RAM hungry shopping cart application is just running out of juice. The thing is that shared hosting is intended to meet the needs of the majority. That means that key server resources, such as CPU and RAM, are shared evenly amongst all the websites on that server. As a result you just have to wait in the queue to get the power you need.
Web hosting is not a commodity like electricity or fuel. There are a range of reasons why you should make an informed choice for your web hosting service.
Courtesy of Entrepreneur
