Choosing the right web hosting plan is an essential part of starting a successful website.
While there are several free web hosting options out there, paid hosting plans have more features and better security. This is crucial especially if you’re starting a website for your business.
To make sure that you get the best value out of your hosting plan, it’s important to plan your web hosting purchase wisely and avoid the excessive cost.
This article will explain the details of how to choose the best value web hosting package and get the most out of your hosting plan.
1. Choose the Right Web Hosting Plan For You
Choosing the right plan will help you reduce the cost of your website greatly.
When thinking about the right plan, try to leave the price out of the equation, and focus more on what your website needs. Most hosting providers, like Hostinger, have a variety of hosting plans with different features, benefits, and price range.
If you’re starting small, you may choose a shared hosting plan. Users get fewer resources compared to VPS or dedicated hosting, but shared hosting is much cheaper and is enough for a small website.
However, you may be creating a website for your business that’s projected to grow and gain heavy traffic in a year. Or maybe you’re starting an eCommerce business and you need to have a powerful server that can handle the volume of traffic during sales campaigns.
If that’s the case, you’ll need a hosting plan that matches your needs. You may opt for VPS, cloud, or dedicated hosting. These plans allocate more resources to users and are easier to scale.
They may look more expensive on paper, but the features and benefits it has for your business will save you more money in the long run.
2. Pay Several Years in Advance
Paying for a year or more of hosting can also help you cut costs. Many hosting providers allow their customers to pay in advance at a discounted price.
For example, the 3-5 year hosting plans are priced cheaper than the one year plan. The shorter the period of time in the plan, the more expensive it’ll be.
The same applies to domain name registrars. These platforms that help website owners register and manage their domains also offer yearly renewals. Like hosting plans, you’ll get a bigger discount if you pay a couple of years in advance.
That’s why it’s important to plan ahead and research before choosing your hosting provider and domain name registrar. Research is crucial because if you don’t look close enough, many providers and registrars have hidden fees or misleading plans that will cost you more money than you signed up for.
3. Discounts on Multiple Websites
If you currently have multiple websites, consider moving them all into one hosting provider. There are some reasons why hosting multiple sites in one provider can save your money.
First, most hosting providers will give a discounted price for their hosting plans when you host multiple sites. Some also allow you to move in your website to their server free of charge.
It’s also generally easier to maintain and keep a tab of the bills when it comes from one provider, compared to multiple. Moving your sites to a single provider will not only save your money with discounts but also your time and resources.
4. Email Hosting
There are lots of free email hosting services out there, like Google, Yahoo, and Hotmail. While they’re a great choice for personal email, businesses will benefit from having a custom domain for their email accounts.
For a professional look, businesses usually pay for additional email hosting aside from web hosting to get a personalized email domain.
However, this means more cost for your business. To avoid this extra cost, check with your hosting provider if they also have a hosting email service. Many hosting providers will bundle email hosting with your website hosting plan at a discounted price.
If you haven’t decided on a web hosting provider yet, choose one that includes free email hosting in their hosting plans.
5. SSL Security
For browser developers and search engines, website security is a priority. Google Developers have made it clear that HTTPS is now a requirement for many of its browser’s features, and has marked all websites without HTTPS as not secure since 2018.
HTTPS ensures that all data that passes from the user to the website is secure and can’t be tampered with by intruders. One way to protect your website with HTTPS is through an SSL certificate.
Many services, like Let’s Encrypt, offer SSL certificates for free. However, these services often require you to have technical knowledge about website security to implement the certificate.
Paid services are more beginner-friendly because they offer technical support, but this also means extra cost for your website.
To ensure that you’re not spending excessively on your website security, consider choosing a hosting provider that includes a free SSL certificate in their hosting plan.
6. Support and Maintenance
Having a website means you’ll have to deal with technical problems. No hosting provider guarantees 100% uptime and issues like unexpected server maintenance will inevitably pop up in the future.
When a provider has poor customer support, that means they can’t give the needed support to deal with technical issues. The website owner will have to deal with it themselves or pay a third party that has the expertise to fix it.
Before choosing a hosting provider, be sure to check customer reviews about the support they have. Many hosting providers will claim to have 24/7 support, but the only way to check they claim to see the reviews from their current and former customers.
Websites also require constant maintenance. Keeping up with the latest software updates and patches, if not taken care of by the provider, is extra work for the website owner. Choose a provider that guarantees to take care of any issues you might run into.
Final Thoughts
Hosting a website can rack up lots of additional costs if not planned beforehand. The best way to avoid these costs is to pay only for the resources you need, so researching your providers before making a choice is essential.
