11 Important Factors to Consider When Choosing Your Web Host

What’s one of the most important factors to consider when choosing a web host for your company site?

These answers are provided by Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. YEC has also launched BusinessCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

1. Your Business’s Needs

Before you begin looking at options, consider the type of site you are building, whether you need any special features, as well as your anticipated site traffic volume. Don’t pigeonhole yourself into what your site should look like now. Think about what you want it to be next year. Starting with a good foundation makes it easier to update and expand later down the pike. – Blair Thomas, eMerchantBroker

2. Security

You want to ensure that your web host is capable of keeping your client/customer data safe. Ensure they have SSL encryption available and have sufficient tools available to prevent website hacks and malware. You may also want to consider connecting your server to a free service like Cloudflare to help prevent DDoS attacks. – Bryan Kesler, CPA Exam Guide

3. Support for Your Tech Stack

We manage a lot of hosting migrations as part of larger development and SEO projects, and what’s proven to be the most important aspect when considering a new host is their specialized knowledge of the client’s technical stack. While AWS has some amazing offerings, this means it’s worth looking at Azure for IIS, WP Engine for small WordPress sites (Pagely for larger ones), and so on. – Nick Eubanks, I’m From The Future

4. Speed

With Google’s algorithms favoring mobile searches, the need for download speed is greater than ever before. When selecting a host, make sure you choose one that will guarantee the fastest download speed possible. Your site design has to be optimized for speed, but the web server is key. Amazon AWS offers a powerful hosting service that allows you to increase/decrease bandwidth based on your needs. – Marcela De Vivo, Mulligan Funding

5. Support

I want to make sure they have 24/7 support should an issue arise. Things will happen and if you have to wait hours to fix them, then I have a bigger issue. – Jessica Gonzalez, InCharged

6. Flexibility and Scalability

When choosing a web host, look for one that not only meets your current needs but that will also be useful as you grow. For example, many small businesses start with the cheapest shared hosting plan. At some point, you may want to upgrade to cloud hosting or a dedicated server. Look for hosts that not only have a good reputation but that offer a variety of plans and services to help you scale. – Kalin Kassabov, ProTexting

7. Expected Traffic and Uptime

You need to understand how much traffic you will be expecting or desire because this is going to determine which price level you need to purchase. Uptime or an SLA guarantee is also critical to ensure that your website is up and always active. For big businesses, one hour of downtime can cost major dollars. – Nicole Munoz, Start Ranking Now

8. Fully Managed Hosting Services

Having run high-traffic websites for many years, I can say without a doubt that having fully managed hosting is important. The hosting company has highly trained experts on hand 24/7 to help you with anything that goes wrong with or needs changing on your servers. Problems will inevitably happen and an on-hand expert to help you fix things quickly is priceless. – Justin Faerman, Conscious Lifestyle Magazine

9. Live Chat

Our web host provider has 24/7 customer support via live chat, which has been a game changer. We no longer need to wait on hold or for an email the next day. Instead, I just hop on their site and chat with an agent at any time while they look into the issue. I can copy and paste links or send them screenshots of the page in question and resolve the problem quickly. – Syed Balkhi, OptinMonster

10. Intuitive UI

Say that my developer left or we were in a transition. I want to make sure I am able to take over without any issues. The best web hosts don’t make you do 10 things to get one thing done. They are usually extremely intuitive and easy to use. If you want to install WordPress, no problem, there’s one-click installs. Don’t get stuck with a bad web hosting company. – Sweta Patel, Silicon Valley Startup Marketing

11. Reputation and Reviews

When choosing a new web host, I like to go through customer reviews and search Twitter to find out what they’re saying. Is their social media page full of customer complaints or loyal, engaging customers? This will help you find out what the customers think of the company and if it is one you should consider giving your business to. – Jared Atchison, WPForms

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