Starting your blog is a crucial stage in anyone’s life. And, if you are like me, you would have been bombarded with the hosting options available online. A simple google search on hosting will provide you hundreds of options to choose.
Great, but when you read reviews, almost every hosting market themselves as the best hosting out there. So, which one to choose?
In today’s article on “How to pick hosting for your blog”, we will go through some of the key aspects of choosing the right hosting for your blog. Not everyone needs are similar, and that’s why it is also required to understand that no general hosting company can fulfill the needs of everyone.
Starting with WordPress.com Free or Blogger Free Hosting
If you are new to blogging, you might have taken the free hosting services into account. For starters, it might not look bad at the first glance. But, it has severe implications in a long run. If you are starting out, it is a good idea to avoid Free hosting services. There are many reasons why not to host your blog on free hosting service if you are serious about blogging. Let’s go through them one by one.
- You never own all the files and media hosted on the server.
- Many free hosting accounts are limited when it comes to content monetization. For example, WordPress.com free hosting doesn’t let you use affiliate links, and they also publish their ads on your blog for sustainability purposes.
- If you build backlinks to your blog, you are improving the hosting backlink strength, and that’s not good at all.
- Customization is no go. You will be discouraged when you want to expand your blog to the next level.
I think, these four reasons are more than enough for avoiding free hosting providers. Other than WordPress.com and blogger, other hosting providers offer free hosting services. In general, it is always a good idea to avoid free hosting service and should only be considered for the testing purposes.
How to pick hosting for your blog?
If you are starting out, you might want to take care of the some important aspects. Without much delay, let’s get started.
Understanding your needs: The biggest mistake that most of the bloggers make is not making their understanding clear. If you are just starting out and is looking to save as much money as possible, a shared hosting is a great place to start.
It is also necessary to understand that many bloggers need security for their blog. Organization or Enterprise website, for example, will always want to get a VPS hosting for high needs. If you are using WordPress as your blogging software, you might also wish to take a look at the managed WordPress hosting providers. It is not cheap but does the job right.
You may also want to know that the hosting provides support for your blogging software or language.
Packages and policy usages: Hosting companies target the different audience, and that means they offer different packages with different usage policies. Before you jump on to a particular package, it is a good idea to learn more about the limitation of the package. This way you will know what to expect. Also, many hosting companies have a poor background of stealing websites. Good research will make sure that you don’t fall into the same trap.
Hosting service features: Who doesn’t love features that can be useful? During the choice of the perfect web hosting, going through the features is a good idea. Most of the hosting services come with CPanel, an easy way to handle your hosting server. Other features that you should look for are FTP support, SSL, .htaccess edit, Cron jobs, etc.
Ease of Use: A good hosting provides not only excellent feature set but also the excellent user interface. Many hosts use CPanel, and that’s a good start for user experience. If you are not sure about the user experience, try the demo.
Support: I cannot stress how important this one is. With support, it becomes very hard to keep your site rolling. There can be instances when you need to talk to the support, and a bad support can quickly ruin the long term plans. A good support always makes your hosting experience smooth and give you enough time and energy to invest in other growth activities.
Email Hosting: Using a hosting service is not limited to only website hosting. You will also get email hosting provided by the hosting service provider. This way you can use an email address such as xyz@yourdomain.com. Using emails with your domain name can increase credibility and business value.
Backup Facility: Good hosting providers are very keen to keeping websites backed up. The rate of the backup depends on the service and the package that you are using. In worst case scenario, you might not have a backup of your website, but the hosting service can quickly provide you with one. Hacking is one of the biggest problems with the internet and a good hosting provider should always backup your website either on a daily or weekly basis.
Uptime Records: Uptime refers to the time for which the server is up and running. If you are serious about your blog, you should always choose a hosting service that provides at least 99.5% uptime.
Maintenance and other support: Servers are just like human beings. They need to be continuously upgraded with new features and also maintained at the same time. Look at their past maintenance and feature upgrades to understand their level of commitment to improving the service.
E-Commerce support: Generally, most of the hosting have support for electronic commerce. Double check before proceeding further.
Over To You
With all the points in mind, I will recommend Bluehost for WordPress users as their starting hosting service. You can check our article on best WordPress hosting service for a better understanding of what we recommend.
Want to add anything to the article? Use the comment section below!
Leave a Reply