For businesses that work online, having the right web hosting provider is an essential key to success because it has countless benefits that make a lot of things easier for you, especially if your business requires focus on different things that are more useful and important for you than taking care of server maintenance. However, even if web hosting brings a lot of relief and benefits, sometimes companies can make critical mistakes that can lead to poor performance, security breaches, or downtime, which is something that none of us want to deal with. To easily avoid these mistakes that can cost you and negatively impact your business, it is useful to educate yourself about them. To help you avoid these mistakes, we researched the top web hosting mistakes every business should avoid.
Choosing the Wrong Hosting Plan
The most common mistake that businesses, especially startup companies, make is choosing the cheapest web hosting plan. Choosing affordable web hosting is not the wrong thing to do, but it is important to make sure that the chosen plan provides the fitting resources and meets the needs of the website. The decent price of web hosting that has every resource needed is for sure an amazing opportunity for people with small businesses! You can choose from various plans, such as shared hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting, and cloud hosting.
Make sure to research their positive and negative side before choosing because they will impact the effectiveness of your website. For example, shared hosting is the most affordable one but as your site grows and improves, its performance may slow down. Dedicated hosting is the most powerful one but it is the most expensive plan. VPS hosting provides a good performance but shares some resources, etc.
Make sure that the plan you choose meets all the needs your business requires, such as future growth and improvement. The rightly chosen plan will help you avoid any kind of performance issues and there will be no need for frequent upgrades.
Ignoring Scalability
Lack of scalability can have a negative impact on your website as it can lead to slow load times and other kinds of crashes on your website which can result in losing many potential customers. That’s why you need to make sure that your hosting provider offers scalable solutions. Many businesses do not pay attention to this factor and usually choose the web hosting provider that does not offer these solutions, which results in serious consequences for their business. It is important to make sure that your hosting plan can keep your website functional and responsive as it follows its growth trajectory.
Overlooking Security Features
Not every web hosting provider is reliable, so before choosing your provider, make sure that they provide robust security features. The security of your website is one of the most important factors that you should focus on and it should not be neglected at all. Cyberattacks, data breaches, and malware infections can have a devastating effect on your business and can cause the loss of customers.
To secure your peace of mind and protect your business, make sure that your web hosting provider has firewall protection, SSL certificates, DDoS protection, regular backups, and malware scanning and removal.
Not Checking Uptime Guarantees
The uptime of your website has a big impact on your SEO ranking and user experience. That’s why your web hosting provider should offer a 99,9% uptime guarantee, which means that your site will be available all the time. If your website is frequently unavailable, that can cause problems, and customers will most likely go to other websites. Also, frequent downtime can cause the lowering of your income, especially in e-commerce businesses.
Before you choose your web hosting provider, you should always check for user ratings, reports about the uptime, and service level agreements.
Neglecting Customer Support
Having a quick and efficient team that solves any technical problems that appear in quick time is a very useful factor for a successful business. When choosing your web hosting provider, make sure that they have:
- 24/7 customer support through live chat, phone number, or email.
- Knowledgeable staff who can easily solve any technical issues.
- Knowledgeable base with forums, guides, and frequently asked questions.
If the web hosting provider has weak or limited user support, it can cause long-lasting problems and the downfall of your business, so make sure to not make this mistake.
Neglecting Website Backups
Having irregular backups, which many businesses usually do, can lead to data loss due to cyberattacks, server failures, or accidental deletions. Just imagine losing all your data and not having access to any backups. It can be stressful and devastating.
That’s why it is important to have a good hosting provider that offers automatic backups with easy restoration options. Having a good backup strategy brings many benefits to your website and prevents it from becoming chaotic. Make sure that backups are performed daily or weekly and that they are stored in multiple locations.
Choosing a Host Without CDN Support
Many hosting providers offer Content Delivery Network (CDN) integration. CDN enables fast site loading by caching content on multiple global servers. Using it can reduce overdue and prevent slow loading of the website. It increases the reliability of the website and increases its performance. Do not make a mistake by not using CDN support. Not having it can negatively impact user experience and SEO.
Using a Free Hosting Service for Business Websites
Choosing a free hosting service seems like an option that can save you a lot of money, but it usually has more limitations than benefits. Free hosting includes ads and limited bandwidth and with it, you won’t be completely able to have full control over your website’s data and files. This leads to the conclusion that free hosting will most likely not offer you proper security measures, which can make your website vulnerable to cyber threats.
For a website to appear more professional, a reliable hosting provider with strong security features and sufficient resources is something necessary.
Avoiding these common mistakes can save and improve your business. Carefully choosing your web hosting provider that fits your needs, security requirements and scalability options will surely help you on your way to success.
