Imagine this. You build a very cool looking website and start out your business journey in a certain niche. Even though you’re just a “rookie”, you feel like you can make a big splash and quickly grow a loyal customer base.
However, after a month you notice that something just isn’t quite right. You notice the bad conversion rate and learn that people leave your site almost immediately after arriving at it.
Even though you offer great services, post strong content on your website, people still bounce.
Such performance can be attributed to a number of different factors, however, one of the most important ones is the technical side of your project, including the speediness and functionality of the site.
Believe it or not, the main perpetrator for a lackluster performance of your website might be your hosting provider.
In this article, I will talk about how to choose a Shared Web Hosting provider and what to look for in the plans that you’re being offered.
Table of Contents
First of all, why Shared Web Hosting?
Shared Web Hosting is by far the cheapest type of hosting plan that you can choose. Despite its low price, it still offers great functionality and resources for business websites, especially for those that are just starting out and don’t want to spend a lot of money on their hosting.
There’s a lot of providers out there that offer Shared Web Hosting plans for similarly low prices, however, the key here is to choose the one that offers the things that you need and will allow your business to operate without flaws.
How to choose a Shared Web Hosting provider?
Now that I’ve talked about why Shared Hosting in general is the best solution for startup businesses, I will give more insight on how to evaluate the right hosting provider for your business.
Look at the speed you get
Speed in the world of online business matters to a degree that it has never been before. Even if your website is well built and maintained, issues like slow content loading or transactions can make a client bounce in a matter of seconds.
Trust me, they’ll find a competitor that hasn’t got any issues with speed and will provide a better user experience.
That is why you need a hosting provider that makes speed it’s main priority. There are a number of providers and they all specialize in certain areas, however, there probably isn’t a more important thing for a business website than having speed.
Providers like this offer a fair amount of bandwidth with their plans. So, as your website will eventually grow in traffic, you will need to be able to maintain a decent speed for the content to load and transactions to happen.
Evaluate the kind of support you will receive
It doesn’t matter whether you buy yourself a dedicated physical offer (the most expensive option which offers the most resources) or a shared hosting plan (in which you share the resources with other websites).
I think that every client should be treated equally and receive any type of support they might need for their website. You might think this doesn’t matter too much and that you will manage yourself.
However, let’s say something happens that’s out of your expertise. The support team of the provider should be right there to help immediately, no matter whether you’re paying 1$ or 50$ a month.
After all, it’s your business we’re talking about here.
Since the hosting industry is so competitive, I doubt there’s many providers left that offer lackluster support. If they are, they’re losing clients every minute.
Anyway, do prioritize support for your hosting plan.
Consider growth opportunities
As I’ve mentioned earlier, your business and your website will eventually grow. You’re likely to expand into new niches, offer new products, etc. For this, you will need more website resources, that’s for sure.
While shared hosting is great for starters, it simply cannot match the stronger plans. You will need more bandwidth, resources and a much better support option if you want to operate without any issues.
A considerate hosting provider will help upgrade your plans and will offer more as you start growing. No issues should ever occur when you scale up. While it isn’t likely to happen with a good hosting provider, it’s still a thing to keep in mind.
All in all
I’ve talked about shared hosting and why it’s a good plan for starting businesses, as well as how to choose a great hosting provider for it. Consider all of these things I’ve talked about above, and everything should go smoothly.
