How to choose the best Web Hosting

Selecting a web host for your website is no straight forward task. Even the experts can struggle to keep up to date with the latest service providers and the pros and cons of each one.

What is crucial, is that consideration is given to how you will be using the website both when it’s originally launched and in the future, should your business expand for example.

There are a number of ways to select a web host, you can conduct your own research which could become quite time consuming, you can get web hosting advice from several related sites such as this one.

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The key areas that the majority of comparison tables will provide information on are:

• Cost
• Support
• Uptime
• Bandwidth
• Disk space
• The websites that the host works best with

You will generally see the same five or six hosts reviewed in most comparisons but sometimes a new host becomes available and offers new deals when it first starts up. Always check the small print when you’re looking at a newer web host that doesn’t have a well-established reputation.

The top web hosts that you will mostly see are:

eHost

Features of eHost include a free domain name, 1000s of templates to choose from, free email address, free website builder, 24/7 support and can cost as little as £2.75 per month depending on whether there is a current deal. eHost also offers unlimited bandwidth and disk space. eHost also boasts a great track record for Uptime of 100% in 2016.

Dreamhost

Another host that offers great 24/7 support, 100% Uptime guarantee, easy installation of web apps such as WordPress and unlimited storage, all from around £6 per month.

HostGator

With unlimited storage, 24/7 support, managed WordPress hosting, HostGator is another popular choice of web host. Includes a website builder with drag and drop functionality to make it easier to design the look of your web pages. With a 99.9% Uptime, it scores slightly less than the previous two hosts but is still atop performer in this area.

BlueHost

Offers 24/7 support, free domain name, free site builder and available at around £3 per month. With Uptime measured at between 99.66% – 100% over the last 12 months, it is not a top performer for reliability.

GoDaddy

Even if you’ve never had to think about web hosts until now, you will most likely have seen the television campaign for GoDaddy, which offers services from £1 per month. This can often draw in the customers but is for the website and not the web hosting option. The Web Hosting option is usually available for £3 per month and provides a guarantee of 99.9% Uptime and faster page load times due to having global data centres.

123-reg.co.uk

Another well advertised web host that started off as a domain name provider and has expanded to offer web hosting as well. Unfortunately for the company, it was well reported (see BBC news for full details) that it accidentally deleted a number of websites in a clean-up error. Not great for the company’s reputation but it still provides a good web hosting service from £2.50 per month. It also provides unlimited bandwidth and website blacklist monitoring.

This is just a quick overview of some of the popular web hosts and features and other considerations should be taken into account when selecting your web host. Cyber security is of particular importance, as echoed by the chancellor’s recent speech at the Future Decoded event, in the current climate and it is recommended that you enquire about the security services of web hosts.