So now that you have locked in and purchased your domain name, what’s next? Picking out the correct hosting plan for your website right away will give you less of a headache down the road as you expand and grow your business. When choosing a company it is important to look the reputation of up-time, hosting features, hosting specific support. Support will be the biggest and most important thing to consider, unless you have an employee or friend that can also help you troubleshoot. It is VERY important to ask about backup options, most companies have an auto back up option at a cost. It is also easy to setup your own backups on the hosting, that is something we will touch on at a later date.
There are 3 major choices for web hosting, shared hosting, virtual private server, or dedicated server. When you are first getting started you will more than likely be getting a shared hosting plan. Virtual private or dedicated server will have a LOT more up keep than shared hosting because you are the server administrator for that virtual machine, so unless you have an employee that has server admin experience try to stick to shared hosting because it can get costly.
Working out the way your site is going to be built will also be a huge part of your hosting search. It is important to look at your options of website building. Choosing a CMS (Content Management System) like WordPress, Joomla!, or Drupal will need to be on a web hosting account with a Linux OS for best performance and troubleshooting. It will be important to look at the resources of the web hosting to make sure that your CMS has enough power to run all functions, so checking you CPU, RAM, I/O usage. With CMS sites the more extensions/modules/plugins you run the slower your site will run, so make sure you prioritize your site to keep it light.
Custom built sites can get a little tricky with hosting, depending on what programming language the site is being built with. It is best to have a detailed conversation with the website developer about web hosting to make sure you don’t run into issue with errors or functionality.