There are 3 main things to check before buying web hosting which are,
- cost,
- managed vs unmanaged web hosting,
- and service quality.
We will also cover other aspects of hosting but the above are the main considerations.
Table of Contents:
- Top 3 things to check before buying web hosting
- General assessment criteria to follow when choosing a hosting provider
- Additional things to check specifically for VPS hosting
- VPS related related FAQ’s
Top 3 things to check before buying web hosting
A special note on Server Speed
A special note on Server Speed
Most people will say that speed is the most important thing to check before buying web hosting but that is a largely mis-understood concept. The speed of your server is significant but not the most significant factor in having a fast website for your users. The speed of a website is a combination between
- the actual software your site runs on (eg WordPress or Wix or whatever),
- the server speed in delivering the site files once the software has run,
- and some other factors like ‘server location’ and the use of a CDN for cases where your server is not located close to your user base’s geographic location.
Most hosting providers have perfectly fast servers that you can work with so we haven’t counted this as one of the most important aspects. For eg, you can have a blazing fast website on a basic shared hosting plan from many web hosts. I like to analyze the customer service record of the hosting company and read the bad reviews to see if there is a major issue with speed.
1: Web hosting pricing
1a: Renewal Cost
Hosting plans often ‘renew’ the initial contract term (eg 36 months) at a higher rate – the higher rate is known as the ‘renewal cost’. As such the cost of your hosting may change after the initial invoice and this is an issue because it can be a ‘hidden cost’. Hosting companies often don’t make this fact obvious upon sign up which means you aren’t factoring it in when you make your decision and you end up thinking you’re getting a better deal than you may be getting. You can search for hosting companies and plans by their renewal cost using our Fast Lane search tool and also VPS Plans.
1b: Initial Cost
Web hosting plans often (but not always) offer the initial term (eg 36 months) at a lower rate. This is to get you in the door BUT these prices don’t always last for the next invoice, aka ‘The renewal price’. Be aware of this as down the road it may be difficult for you to move hosts. Not impossible but difficult. The renewal rate is the long term cost of your hosting without any of the discounts on the front end.
PROTIP: Use the same ‘renewal’ rate and the ‘initial cost’ filters to see plans which keep the same cost for both initial terms and renewal terms. This represents a ‘good deal’ over time. You can use these filters to sort WordPress or VPS Hosting Plans at this time.
What should you expect to pay for an entry level web hosting plan?
For shared hosting you could expect to pay sub $10 p/month for unmanaged hosting and between $20-$40 p/month for managed hosting. This is the renewal cost but often you can find lower than this on the initial price.
2: Managed vs Unmanaged Hosting
A ‘managed hosting account’ will cost more as it does more for you by automating several of the software updates and security features needed to have a safe and well maintained website over time. If you are not interested in learning technical server side implementations then go with a managed hosting plan. This would apply to non-technical people but if you are a developer then you may get away with a cPanel account to do simple tasks like change PHP versions, administer email accounts etc etc. You can search managed and unmanaged WordPress Hosting to find a hosting plan that is right for you and has all the other resources you need.
3: Customer Service aka, Trust Pilot Score
This is the companies TrustPilot Review total out of 5. TrustPilot is an independent review platform so reviews can be more transparent. Do check out the reviews for any host, both good and bad, to see if there is anything you may feel uncomfortable about.
General assessment criteria to follow when choosing a hosting provider:
Server Type:
There are several different kinds of hosting to check before buying web hosting so here we’ve tried to explain shared hosting vs vps vs dedicated vs cloud.
Shared Server:
A ‘shared server’ means you will have one server computer which handles traffic to your site AS WELL as other websites and will hence not be as fast. This is OK for small sites as they require less resources because of their lack of traffic. With an optimized website you can most likely handle up to 10,000 users per month on a shared server. If you have or expect traffic above that then feel free to upgrade and get more resources. It’s possible to still get shared hosting with more resources also without having to upgrade to one of the other server types below.
If you are a business or expect a significant amount of traffic then choose ‘dedicated’ as this will mean you will have your website only on one server computer which will mean a faster website for you and your users.
VPS and Cloud Hosting:
VPS and cloud hosting are virtual machines that allow you to have more resources and share less than shared server set ups. A VPS gives you a lot of resources but it still prone to some outages as you still only have one set of software on a virtual machine for your site. Most VPS can keep a 99.9% uptime fairly easily.
A Cloud hosting set up is almost the same as a VPS except that there are multiple machines (visualized by the word cloud) which all share software. This means that you get a lot of resources (RAM, CPU, storage etc) but have much better chance of never going down. This is because is a piece of software fails in your current virtual server, in a cloud set up, another virtual server will plugin in automatically and replace that piece of software so there is no downtime.
What the advantage of VPS and Cloud are over shared hosting?
The short answer is that VPS and (especially) Cloud will mean less down time and a faster experience for your users. The downside is that these are usually more costly than shared hosting.
In order to figure out if you need to spend the extra money you should try to understand how many visitors you have or bandwidth you need. This will dictate whether you can get away with a shared host or you need to upgrade to a CPS or Cloud option. Shared hosting websites can be fast with sub 10,000 visitors per month and an optimized website.
Dedicated Hosting:
A dedicated host is more similar to a shared host in that it is a physical server (not a virtual one in the case of VPS and Cloud) but it is just for your particular website. You get a lot of resources but still have the chance of going down sometimes. Dedicated servers can still have very high uptimes in the 99.9% range. They generally cost a lot more than VPS, Cloud or shared hosting.
Hosting Company
There are many companies offering WordPress Hosting. many people like to avoid EIG companies as described below or like to find a good hosting company who a friend or knowledgeable person has recommended. This can be a good proxy for finding a good hosting plan but the best is to search for a company you like and a plan that has what you need. For that reason we developed a search filter which allows you to search by non EIG companies AND by bandwidth, or email accounts or whatever you need.
EIG Company or not
Many people in the community prefer non-EIG web hosting service providers because EIG owned companies are considered to have poor service at higher prices and dominate the market making it hard for people to find quality, affordable hosting.
EIG is a large insurance company which also owns many many web hosting companies. Some people in the hosting community do not like to use these companies as they see them as polluting the industry with marketing of what some would say are not the best business practices. You can view non-EIG hosting companies whether WordPress or VPS hosting is your aim.
Number of websites
It’s possible that you may have more than one domain name with which you want to host on the plan and as such you can choose a plan with multiple or even unlimited domain names.
Number of email accounts
The amount of email accounts you can create with a plan. If you have many staff then you may need a plan with many or even unlimited potential email addresses.
Disk Space
This measures how much physical memory or storage your site will be able to have. For eg, this would count images and the database as well as all the files. Images can bloat a website’s size in GB so be aware of this if your site is particularly image heavy. If so you may want a host plan on the larger end of this metric. Some hosting companies offer unlimited storage.
Free Domain or not
Before buying web hosting check whether or not this plan includes a free domain. If you already have a domain name then you don’t need to worry about this feature. Often times these ‘free domains’ will renew after one year at a rate higher than you could just buy yourself from a service like namecheap.com so I prefer to buy there as opposed to finding a host plan with a free domain.
Provides Site Transfer
Some hosts will transfer your WordPress sites to their hosting platform on your behalf. This can be very helpful to non-technical users as moving a site can be a daunting task. It’s actually not that hard with WordPress unless you are changing domain names at the same time as moving hosts but it makes people feel confident about the move so many hosting companies include this in their plans.
Bandwidth
Bandwidth is a measure of how much data at any one time your server can handle and is often used to gauge how many users can be on the site when the page size is also taken into consideration. For example, if your average page size in 1MB (as it should be if you’ve optimized correctly) and you have a bandwidth of 50 GB then you can estimate that you can handle approximately 50,000 users at any one time.
Visitors per month
This is a proxy for Bandwidth but a bit more palatable and gives you an idea of how many visitors your site will be able to handle on this plans shown. You will see companies offering plans that say something like ‘10,000 visitors p/month’ as a general guide for this. If you have a new website then you likely won’t have a lot of traffic and a shared hosting plan is often the way to go here. You can always upgrade your hosting plan with your hosting provider if you find you need more.
PROTIP: The estimates you are given by hosting providers are assuming your site is performant and has been optimized. Your results may vary considerably if this is not the case.
Server Location
The location of your server should be as close to your audience as possible. Often times this means anything in North America or Europe but could also be Sydney, Singapore or South America depending on your audience location. Don’t stress too much about this but some people like to maximize their load time by placing a server nearest their audience as there will be a small speed difference in page load when you align server location and your audience.
Additional things to check specifically for VPS hosting:
Managed VPS or not
Managed VPS’s mean you do less server set up and admin as the hosting company will manage some of the software for you. Look at the services that managed VPS’s provide and see if you can/want to do those. If you are an advanced user you may want full control over the server set up and have the skills to do without breaking something so you could look for an unmanaged VPS or Cloud hosting plan.
Initial Cost:
Hosting plans often (but not always) offer the initial term (eg 36 months) at a lower rate. This is to get you in the door BUT these prices don’t always last for the next invoice or the renewal price. Be aware of this as down the road it may be difficult for you to move hosts. Not impossible but difficult. The renewal rate is the long term cost of your hosting without any of the discounts on the front end.
Renewal Cost
Hosting plans often ‘renew’ the initial term (eg 36 months) at a higher rate. As mentioned above the cost of your hosting may change after the initial invoice.
PROTIP: Use the same ‘renewal’ rate and the ‘initial cost’ filters to see plans which keep the same cost for both initial terms and renewal terms. This represents a ‘good deal’ over time. You can use these filters to sort WordPress or VPS Hosting Plans at this time.
Bandwidth
Bandwidth is a measure of how much data at any one time your server can handle and is often used to gauge how many users can be on the site when the page size is also taken into consideration. For example, if your average page size in 1MB (as it should be if you’ve optimized correctly) and you have a bandwidth of 50 GB then you can estimate that you can handle approximately 50,000 users at any one time.
CPU
The type and quantity of CPU used by this plan. A CPU is the processor or the brain of the virtual machine which is hosting your site. The higher the better but also more costly so just go for something within your budget. You can search for VPS and Cloud Hosting by CPU Cores.
RAM
RAM is a measure of how the VPS can handle multiple tasks. You will notice a speed difference with greater RAM but just like CPU its a balance between getting what is reasonable to provide a good user experience and the cost.
Dedicated IP
Sometimes you will want a dedicated IP for your Virtual Machine or Cloud Hosting. You can search for providers which allow for this feature or view a list of VPS and Cloud providers that have one or more dedicated IP address in their plans.
Admin Software
A server is a computer and you can think of ‘Admin Software’ like an operating system (eg windows or OSX) but made specifically for navigating and managing a server computer. There are different types of server admin software, most commonly cPanel, but you may have another preference like Plesk of DirectAdmin. You can search for hosting plans by different Admin Software available.
Site Transfer
“transfer” is the amount of data you are able to push in a given period (usually, the meter is reset every month). This is slightly different to “bandwidth” is the port speed (internet speed of the server).
WHM Liscence
WHM allows the most cPanel licenses which is useful in the case you are a reseller of hosting for your own web or hosting clients as each of them may want a cPanel also. This only applies to cPanel and not Plesk or DirectAdmin. You can search for VPS and Cloud Hosting plans that offer multiple cPanel licenses also.
VPS related related FAQ’s:
How many websites can a VPS host?
A VPS can host as many websites as you like as there is no specific limit on that aspect. You will however need to be aware of the resources required by your site(s) compared to the resources offered by your VPS. For example, bandwidth, storage etc.
