Web Hosting for Beginners

Posted on Oct 16 2017 - 9:13am by Editor

Are you thinking about getting your own website set up? Perhaps you have started to work out what your next steps are but you’re a bit confused. With so many different website companies and variations of hosting plans, it is hard to work out where to start. Should you go with WordPress? Or maybe Wix? Should you go for free hosting or dedicated? When all of this is new to you, it can be a very difficult process. You just want to get a good website set up and start putting content on there, right? So it really doesn’t have to be so hard.

Web Hosting for Beginners

It might help to get a better idea of the basics. Web hosting is only as complicated as you want it to be. If you just want a really simple, basic website, you really don’t need to know the full technical rundown on every aspect of what your host provides. You just need a host that is good value and will support every plan that you have for your website.

So that is the best starting point, thinking about and planning what you want to do with your website. What you want to do in the immediate future and also what you want to do two and three years down the line. If you are just starting up a business then it isn’t easy to predict where your website requirements will lead to but it helps to have some idea of what you might want. Will you be selling products through your website? Will you be sending out large volumes of emails to drive people to your website? These are the kind of questions you need to ask yourself.

You need to ensure that your web host will support your requirements if your business rapidly grows. So check out the bandwidth and storage limits, the performance stats and look at reviews that are relevant to your business scenario. Web hosting reviews like this will help you to decide which is the best option for your particular requirements.

Not all businesses require the same service from a web host. For example, if you are handling financial transactions and large volumes of traffic through your site, your needs will be different to someone who wants a one-pager with contact details.

So when you are looking at reviews, think specifically about your own requirements, as you don’t necessarily need the biggest, most expensive plan. Many small businesses opt for a shared hosting service to keep costs down. Shared hosting is cheaper than alternatives such as dedicated or VPS because the server is being shared by numerous websites. Therefore all of the costs are spread between the website owners and will usually cost around £5-£15 per month. This is considerably cheaper than dedicated hosting where you have a server dedicated solely for your website(s).

If you know what your budget is, then your choice of hosting plan will probably be dictated by that. Dedicated hosting provides a more secure service with better performance, so if that is within your budget then that may be the better option for you.

If you have no budget at all, then you might want to consider free hosting. Many websites provide a free website and hosting with limited services. For example, free hosts do not offer customer support and have restrictions on the amount of bandwidth and storage space. The level of performance is generally not great and also many hosts will display ads on your website. So if you don’t want to face those kinds of issues, you are better to look at shared or dedicated hosting.