Crucial Things to Know When Choosing Web Hosting Services

Web hosting plays a significant role in the online realm. Not only does it allow websites to be published live, but it also lets site owners store and upload their content and resources digitally.

But did you know that proper hosting is also important in establishing a good business reputation?

Through web hosting services, a website can provide amazing user experiences that will improve any brand’s image in its market. The opposite is true with a poor hosting solution. This can lead to poor user experiences that reduce your engagement significantly.

So how can you choose the right web hosting solutions for your website?

To help you decide, we’ve prepared a brief guide on the crucial things to know when choosing web hosting services.

How to Choose the Right Web Hosting Services

There are at least five factors to consider when deciding on the ideal web hosting service for your needs. Getting the highest levels on all these factors will ensure that your website can provide an excellent user experience.

These factors are:

Web Hosting Service Factor #1: Speed

The speed of your web hosting service provider is one of the first and most important factors you should consider. Hosting speed is a priority consideration as it shows how fast a provider can load web pages.

Websites that can load quickly often translate to a better user experience since most people won’t stay if a page takes a long time to load. With a slow website, your customers are more likely to leave your page and opt for competitors instead.

When talking about hosting performance, the software stack or server technology used by a provider is one thing to look out for. With technology evolving at a rapid pace, it’s important to have a web host that can adapt quickly and employ the latest tech advancements for maximum speeds.

At A2 Hosting we offer Turbo hosting plans that are designed to provide users with the best speeds for their websites. The limited occupancy of these plans minimizes the number of resources being used while optimized server configurations ensure top performance.

Furthermore, our Turbo packages take advantage of the latest server hardware and software technologies in the market, providing as much as 20x faster page load speeds than the competition. Websites hosted on their turbos plans can handle 9x more traffic with 3x faster read/write speeds.

Web Hosting Service Factor #2: Reliability

Reliability or the uptime of web hosting services is the second most important aspect to consider. Your host’s reliability refers to how often a site is going to be available and accessible to the public.

Besides a slow-loading website, one that can’t be visited is one of the worst things businesses can experience. An inaccessible site, even if it’s just for a few hours, can significantly reduce conversion rates.

Brand websites that experience frequent downtimes can expect their images to be tarnished. No lead or customer would want to visit a website only to find out that it’s not available. Catering to the needs of the target market at all times should be a top priority for your business website.

One way you can avoid experiencing downtimes as much as possible is by leveraging a hosting solution that is guaranteed to have at least 99% uptime. Anything lower than that would drastically reduce conversions.

At A2 Hosting we take advantage of tried and tested technologies, ensuring that all of our customers get 99.99% uptime from our web hosting services.

Web Hosting Service Factor #3: Security

As you browse for your potential hosting solutions provider, you should consider the levels of security they have to offer for new and existing customers. This is particularly important at the server level since this is where most of your site’s resources are stored.

For instance, you want to check if they apply the newest operating system patches to your server. Patches and updates are vital for servers to have as few vulnerabilities as possible. You should also check if they provide DDoS protection and high-level firewalls to filter potentially malicious traffic.

Besides cybersecurity, backups are equally important as well. Backup solutions provide you with a repository containing saved business data that you can fall back on if the worst should happen.

With A2 Hosting, you can leverage secure web hosting services that provide you with top-notch protection and stability for your website. We work on the OpenVPN virtual private network so that our users can work from site to site and point to point without worrying about their security. OpenVPN, in particular, comes with security features such as network address translation (NAT) protection.

Meanwhile, our Brute Force Protection solution lets you block cybercriminals using methods such as IP routing, APF, and custom commands.

Other security features you can find from our packages include:

• ConfigServer and Firewall (CSF) login security
• Linux malware detection solutions
• Linux environment security
• SSL certificates
• Secure Shell (SSH) login security solution
• SimpleRisk risk management solution

At A2 Hosting, our goal is to help you identify potential security threats and resolve them before they become worse. Our secure servers utilize the latest and proven cybersecurity solutions so you can have around-the-clock protection for your websites.

Web Hosting Service Factor #4: Features and Add-Ons

Features and add-ons are always great to have in any web hosting service. The main reason for this is that these added options let you scale up when needed, especially when you wish to expand to a new market.

A2 Hosting offers customers quite a few add-on solutions that can help improve site security, functionality, usability, and experience. These additional options are:

• Cloudflare: The content delivery network (CDN) known as Cloudflare is a service that we provide to our web hosting customers free of charge. We offer a knowledge base of tutorials that will teach you how to set up and get started with Cloudflare.
• SSL certificates: SSL certificate is a necessary add-on solution for any website, especially in terms of ramping up security. Using the right SSL certificate, site owners can make sure that their website data are encrypted while making themselves more trustworthy to their visitors.
• WHMCS hosting: Resellers looking to leverage A2 Hosting’s plans can take advantage of WHMCS since we also support hosting with this feature. You can learn everything from configuring OpenSRS access for WHMCS to ordering a WHMCS license with us.
• Domain and SSL reseller: Again, for resellers or those using managed VPS or managed dedicated server accounts, you can turn into an SSL or eNom domain reseller with A2 Hosting.
• Promotions: Promotional programs are available when you pick A2 Hosting as your web hosting services provider. You can even access a knowledge base containing information on programs for affiliates, refer-a-friend, and more.
• cPanel licensing: Dedicated, cloud VPS, and unmanaged VPS servers normally don’t have cPanel included in their accounts. With A2 Hosting, cPanel licensing in included with many of our plans.
• MailChimp account setup: We can help you sign up for a MailChimp account and teach you how to generate API keys. The latter should help you integrate MailChimp with your A2 Hosting website so you can manage your newsletters and drip campaigns easily.
• Dropmysite: The Dropmysite cPanel plugin lets you keep track of your websites and configure backups for your data. A2 Hosting will provide you with all of the resources you need to make the most of Dropmysite.
• Ordering a Blesta license: Looking to leverage Blesta for your website? A2 Hosting will guide you throughout the process so you can maximize your reseller hosting package with us.

Web Hosting Service Factor #5: Support

If you’ve found a web hosting provider that has the hardware, software, and features that you need, then the next logical step is to consider their support. Does your chosen provider have the expertise, equipment, and resources to ensure you get the best levels of service at all times?

Here are a few aspects to consider when it comes to support:

• Support level: When it comes to a host’s level of support, you need to consider the level of support your business website needs. For instance, do you require VPS, cloud hosting, or dedicated server support? What about WooCommerce or WordPress? Does your host offer help on those platforms? Are you looking for a managed plan where your host takes care of all of your backend server needs or looking to manage it yourself?
• Contact methods: The next aspect to consider is how your provider gets in touch with you in terms of support. Do they offer telephone and live chat or just email? Having an online support ticket system can be crucial, especially for business websites. A2 Hosting offers ticket, live chat, email, and phone calls 24/7/365!
• Ability to respond: Besides being able to contact them through multiple methods, you should also learn how quickly they can address your issue. In case your website goes down, you want to know how long before it gets back up so you can get back to business as soon as possible.
• How quickly they resolve issues: Similar to the above, resolution time is another thing to consider with your web hosting provider. Some hosts pass the concerns of their customers to third-party support providers, which can take several days to be resolved. You want to leverage the support services of a company that can resolve all of your issues themselves. At A2 Hosting we have an extensive in house support team, otherwise know as our guru crew.
• Operating times: Finally, you want to check and ensure your web host can provide around-the-clock support. 24/7 customer service is a must nowadays especially for website owners that can experience problems at any time of the day or night. That’s why A2 Hosting has someone there to help you 24/7/365!

At A2 Hosting, our web hosting services come with the highest levels of support you can expect from a premium provider. We are available to answer inquiries or resolve issues of our customers whenever they need us.

In case you want to learn more about our services, you can visit our support page that contains all of the information you need on various hosting solutions.

Which Level of Hosting Plan Is Right for You?

So which level of web hosting plan fits your needs? Consider the short overview below and click this link to take our free quiz!

Shared Web Hosting Plan

Our Shared Web Hosting plan is our most affordable hosting solution that lets you share resources such as disk space, data transfer, and processing power. It also comes with cPanel, server backups, and unlimited storage.

VPS Hosting Plan

On our VPS Hosting plans you share the same server with other sites, but you get to operate your account independently. This means you get your own allotted amount of resources! If you choose our managed plans back-end server maintenance is handled for you.

Dedicated Hosting Plan

Looking for a premium hosting solution? Our dedicated hosting plan means that you get the highest performance, best features, and a private server solely for all of your business website needs.

Conclusion

These are the most important aspects you should know about choosing a web hosting service. Following the tips provided in this post will help guide you in getting the right solution for your website.

If you have any questions about our web hosting services, contact our sales team today. Interested in finding out which plan is right for you? I encourage you to take our free quiz to help you decide!