Avoid Being Gouged on Web Hosting Costs by Heeding These Simple Tips

Getting a reliable web host is quite essential when it comes to ensuring that your website stays up all the time. It is particularly important if you are ramping up on your digital marketing activities and are expecting an influx of traffic soon. After all, you don’t want to waste all the work you put in by trying to drive more clicks to your site by getting stuck with a slow server.

However, you don’t want to be overpaying either. Depending on your needs, you may want the flexibility of getting a VPS, or the capability of a dedicated host. Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to figuring out which hosting plan will be the right fit.

Here a few tips to help you determine the appropriate web hosting plan for you:

Know Your Goals

Your goals should always inform your business decision, including deciding what you want to pay for when it comes to web hosting. Unfortunately, this isn’t always clear, especially for business owners who may not have the necessary technical expertise. It is particularly true for those who are focused on the day-to-day management of their businesses and do not have enough time to get on the nitty-gritty details of web hosting.

To have an accurate gauge of what you need, you must first define your goals for your digital marketing efforts. If you are at the nascent stages of building your online presence, then opting for expensive dedicated plans may not be the most economical choice. Conversely, sticking to a cheap shared hosting plan may harm your digital marketing efforts because success in driving traffic means putting your shared server to its limits.

Know What You Need

Knowing what you need in a web host requires a rudimentary understanding of how web hosting works.

Your website, along with each and every one of the two billion websites currently up on the internet, lives on servers. These servers are basically powerful computers in data centers around the world. They are called servers because when you “ask” for a website in your browser, it is the server’s job to “serve” you the website. Like the one you have at home, the computer that hosts your website uses components, such as the hard drive, RAM, and CPU to render your website and make it functional.

While offerings may differ, these servers are offered to end-users, such as yourself in three different plans: shared hosting, dedicated hosting, and Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting.

Shared hosting

Shared hosting plans are exactly what they sound. It means that your website is sharing key resources, such as hard drive space, memory, and processing power with others. It is usually the most economical way of getting yourself on the internet, and it works for a lot of small business owners and blogs.

The downside is that because you are sharing these resources, a spike in traffic on one or more of the websites whom you share resources with can affect your own website’s stability.

Dedicated hosting

Dedicated hosting is the opposite. Instead of sharing a server with several others, you are getting the whole server for yourself. With dedicated resources, your server will only have to manage your traffic and will have an easier time serving the website to more people.

The downside is, you guessed it, the cost. Dedicated servers are expensive, but if you are getting tons of traffic, are handling thousands of financial transactions every day, and need custom software or your own operating system to run your website, then it could be right for you.

VPS hosting

VPS hosting combines the value of shared hosting with the capabilities of dedicated servers. Technically, you are sharing resources with other websites. However, with virtualization, the computer is able to allocate resources for your use only. It means that for a reduced price, you are getting your own operating system, storage, and RAM. Depending on your needs, you can even scale up or scale down.

Getting a VPS is a good choice if you require the ability to scale up, especially if you are in the middle of ramping up your digital marketing activities.

Conclusion

Having a reliable web host is like having a good foundation for your house. It does its work well if you are barely noticing it. Just like how a good foundation is made by correctly analyzing the soil characteristics and building requirements, so you should be able to understand and articulate your business goals and needs.

Aside from providing quality VPS servers in Atlanta, I/O Zoom also offers daily backups and up to 30-day money-back guarantee on shared and reseller hosting services. Contact us today to know more.