A good and secure hosting?
The eternal question: which web hosting can I entrust (and have entrusted) my new website to?
This is a common problem faced by businesses, individuals (e.g. bloggers) and website administrators. Of course, the right choice of web hosting depends on several factors, such as the type of business the person is involved with, the size of the website, etc.
It often happens that people choose the first web hosting that comes their way without paying attention to quality and reliability.
However, if you do quality research from the beginning, you can secure a lifetime of website hosting that will be with you all the time.
Besides providing support and answering emails or chats, quality web hosting is the backbone of your own website. It covers everything from loading speed (and we know how it affects SEO) to stability and security.
The importance of good and secure hosting is therefore extraordinary, and below are some tips on how to choose a web hosting that you'll be happy with for the next few years (and maybe for the rest of your life).
Insecure and inadequately protected hosting can cause a horror scenario for your business:
Unauthorized people can have access to your emails, which means they can read all your emails
Unauthorized people can steal your database which contains personal information of your users, money transactions and other confidential data.
Unauthorized people can tamper with your valuable data, which means they can delete it, misuse it or sell it to third parties.
Unauthorized individuals can completely alter the data and content on your website to display completely inaccurate and false information to your users.
It is possible to place malicious code on poorly protected websites to compromise as many website visitors as possible in order to infect their computers and use them for further great damage.
The term web hosting refers to the provision of a virtual space for a website on the Internet. In this context, the term web hosting refers to the person or organization responsible for providing a particular website to users on the Internet.
Around the world, there are literally thousands of different hosting companies that can run your website, and they all offer different packages of storage, traffic, and pricing, many of which are either overpriced or don't offer enough for the money invested.
Not all hosting is suitable for every website.
Just as you don't need the high-priced server for a personal blog, web stores with many products should avoid the cheapest web hosting.
There are three main types of hosting providers: Shared Servers, Virtual Servers and Dedicated Servers.
When you have a website on a Shared server, it shares server resources with other websites on the same server. This is usually the least expensive option, but it can also result in poorer performance because other websites you share server space with will use it heavily. This is one of the servers that is not recommended if you have an online store website. Shared hosts are less secure than other options.
Virtual servers are a type of virtual dedicated server and they provide users with great resources and much greater stability. Usually, they are recommended for small businesses that are based on online stores and have an acceptable number of visits per month.
Dedicated servers are basically completely physical servers that are assigned only to your website. These servers are mainly used for corporate sites and small businesses that have a lot of work with a high number of visits with high traffic.
These servers are the most expensive but at the same time the most reliable part of hosting, with the best response and using large space and traffic.
The key in choosing good and secure hosting is to understand what type of website you will have. Will it be just a private blog where you post? Or will it be a web store with many products?
Different servers are adapted to a specific type of website. Therefore, choose the following web hosting types according to the type of website you want to run:
Blog: The most popular blogging platform is definitely WordPress, which offers some advantages over other platforms. Be sure to consider a WordPress web host.
Web store: the best web hosts for e-commerce stores offer high security, nice template design, various integrations (e.g. Pay Pal) and the like.
Portfolio or CV website: if you have decided to stand out from the competition and create a personal CV or portfolio website, choose website builder hosting. They are the fastest and easiest way to start your own online presence.
Company Website: You should plan ahead and choose a web hosting that you can grow with. Dedicated hosting and VPS are the best for a new website.
The technical side of web hosting could sometimes be confusing, but basically things are very simple - more money you spend, more service you get.
If you want good and secure hosting, you don't need to worry about expensive unlimited disk space, speed or email account. But for selection rules, you need to understand the components and how their limitations can affect your website.
Storage space and RAM: Always choose SSDs over traditional hard drives. They are much faster and reliable but cost more.
Bandwidth and data transfer : Website loading speed is one of the key elements of a website (including SEO). It's also a very simple thing - the more expensive, the faster users can access your site's information.
Domains and email: Choosing web hosting and domain registration are two completely different things. You should put all hosting resources in the same account. Also, some web hosting providers offer special email features.
Reliability: most servers guarantee 99% to 100% reliability. If you are planning a larger website, you should choose a better web hosting to get as close as possible to the desired 100% with as many 9s as possible.
Security and Support: secure web hosting doesn't just depend on the knowledge of the administrator and the strength of the password - more than 40% of websites are compromised precisely because of the weakness of the web hosting. Choose a web hosting that includes a firewall and various security plugins and tools.
Price is almost always the most important factor when buying web hosting. Often, price takes precedence to the detriment of the support and performance of the web hosting. And that leads to problems in the long run.
But considering how much the quality of the web hosting depends on the price, paying a few dollars a month brings incomparably more benefits than just savings.
Sure, there are a lot of free hosting services out there, but it is of great importance to be careful with them - although the savings may seem attractive at first, the lack of features, support, and security can affect your website in the long run.
Many hosting providers offer a discount if hosting is rented for a year or more, and with such packages you get many more hosting options and features.
Always think ahead when choosing a website host.
Where do you see your website in 5 years?
Are you planning to write a blog? Or are you planning to start a web store?
Many hosts only offer shared hosting, which means over time you'll have to switch providers and move to VPS or even dedicated hosting. This means - higher costs.
Let's take a quick look at some commonly used terms in this area:
Disk space - is the additional, i.e. rented, space on which you can store all the files of your website, databases, emails etc.
Bandwidth - indicates the amount of data that is allowed to get to your website, but also from it to the user. Every time you check your email, upload a file, someone visits a page on your site, etc., all of this consumes your traffic, which is the amount of data exchanged in the user-server relationship. In other words, the more the better.
MySQL database - These are databases used by web apps like WordPress, Joomla, Forums etc to store data in a database. So you need them, but not unlimited, but enough to cover all the applications you use without each having its own MySQL database.
Addon Domains - This is pretty simple to understand. This is the number of different domains that will be associated with your hosting account. Depending on the hosting package you choose, you can have one or more domains connected to your hosting account. In either case, it will also require more space on your account, i.e. traffic, storage space, etc.
Uptime - Basically, this is a guaranteed time that your website will be available. So, the more, the better. Still, no one can guarantee 100% uptime, but 99.9% is what you'd expect.
Subdomains - These are effectively subdomains of your main site. For example, if your site is www.mydomain.com, the subdomain could be http://subdomain.mydomain.com.
FTP Accounts - These accounts are used to provide access to upload and download files to and from your website. Each FTP account can be assigned different access restrictions to the files in its account.
