Why Website Hosting is Important for Your Business

While every business knows that it’s important to have an online presence, many businesses overlook the importance of their website hosting. Reliable website hosting is vital to keeping your website up and running and accessible to users. 

What Is Website Hosting?

Every website is hosted somewhere. Web hosting is what gives your website a place to live on the world wide web. Put simply, a web hosting provider allocates space on a server for a website to store its files. HTML, images, and all other website content must be housed on a server to be viewed online.

What are the Different Types of Website Hosting?

There are a variety of different types of web hosting along with various subcategories within the different types of web hosting. Four basic types of web hosting are: 

1. Shared Hosting: Shared website hosting is one of the most basic and inexpensive website hosting options. Shared web hosting is when several websites are hosted on the same server. This hosting option is best suited to personal websites, brand new startups/small businesses looking for a good starting option, etc. 

2. Dedicated Hosting: As the name implies, dedicated web hosting is when your website has exclusive rights over a server. This option offers more benefits but is also more expensive than shared hosting. 

3. VPS Hosting: VPS (Virtual Private Server) web hosting is a middle ground between shared hosting and dedicated web hosting. Your website still shares the physical server space with other websites, but each website has its own “independent virtual real estate”. Essentially, VPS website hosting mimics dedicated server environments within a shared server.

4. Cloud Hosting: Rather than renting space from one server, cloud web hosting utilizes a network of connected virtual and physical cloud servers to host a website. This web hosting option offers a wide variety of benefits, such as greater reliability, flexibility, and scalability. 

Why Good Website Hosting Matters

Why does good website hosting matter? What are the benefits of good website hosting? What makes for good website hosting? The answers to all of these questions are interconnected. The following features are important to look for when looking for a web hosting company/web hosting services. These key features are necessary for good website hosting, which keeps your website performing optimally and provides a better experience for your users.

Reliability & Uptime

Bad hosting services can result in your website going down unexpectedly. This not only makes your website inaccessible to users until the site is back up, but it also harms your search engine optimization (SEO). Naturally, it’s bad for your website to be down for any amount of time, especially if it is a recurring issue. A good website hosting provider should have an average uptime of at least 99%.

Technology

It’s important that your web hosting provider has the technology to support everything you need for your website. A secure data center, the number of allowed subdomains, scripting language support, options for email hosting, etc. are all important factors to consider when analyzing website hosting companies and web hosting services.

Security

If you don’t have secure website hosting, you’re susceptible to breaches and hacks that can take down your website, compromise sensitive data, and more. Oftentimes, when businesses take advantage of free website hosting or cheap website hosting, they’re getting what they pay for. Secure web hosting doesn’t have to be expensive, but it should provide (at the very least) malware protection, SSL certificates, firewalls, and top-of-the-line security measures for physical data centers. 

Scalability

As your business grows and evolves, so should your website hosting services. As your business grows, or if you’re expecting a traffic spike for a particular reason, you want a website hosting provider that can handle increases in traffic. Scalable web hosting increases the available memory and processing power on your website when the need arises. Need to add email hosting, more data storage, more domains, etc.? A reliable website hosting company should be able to meet the changing needs of your business.

Data Backup & Data Recovery

In the instance of a security breach, human error, or some other mishap, you don’t want to lose any of your website data. Months of work and growth can be lost entirely if your website data isn't sufficiently backed up. A reliable web hosting company can provide a variety of both data backup and data recovery options to meet your business's specific needs.

IT Support

While many people think of website hosting as a hands-off process, actual people maintain servers and the website hosted on them. Security upgrades, routine maintenance, testing, and more are all vital to providing the best web hosting services. Additionally, in the case that you need assistance or have questions, you want responsive, helpful IT support. You don’t want a chatbot, you want to talk to an actual expert who can provide you with the IT support services you need. 

Get Reliable, Affordable Website Hosting For Your Business

Global Reach offers reliable, secure website hosting services to meet your business's specific needs. We also offer email hosting, IT support services, and all of the other website services you need to grow your business. See what the best website hosting can do for your business with website hosting services from Global Reach!

Get a FREE Website Hosting Quote Today!