These days every business needs a website, but you’ve likely either heard or read about others that have encountered web hosting fiascos. Don’t worry, this drawback has made plenty of business owners trepidatious about taking the leap of starting the company’s eCommerce website. At BionicWP we know how daunting of a task this can be and in our mission of providing you with the best WordPress and hosting support available, today we wanted to share with you how you can avoid these nightmare scenarios.
Web Hosting 101
A web host is where your domain name (dot com name), or web address, resides. Of course, you fall into a completely different category if you actually have a server farm set up in your home and the bandwidth to support it, but otherwise, you must select a host for your company website. These can be as cheap as a few dollars a month, all the way up to several thousand. However, most businesses can go with a mid-range hosting package from BionicWP for just a few hundred dollars a month and never have to worry about traffic volume, security, backups or other issues common with other WP hosting companies.
How to avoid Web Hosting nightmares:
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- Does it support SSL? An SSL certificate is a must have these days for every business website, but these certificates aren’t included with every plan. Make certain that your selection offers this service.
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- What are the email limitations/restrictions? Hosting plans that provide you with only 5 email addresses with inboxes limited to a few hundred megabytes, that can potentially be a major issue for your business. Ensure that you check out the email specs of any hosting plan before you sign up.
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- Are they offering you a shared server? You simply cannot afford for your business website to fail – ever – so of course reliability is key. Shared servers are a huge hassle and you should choose a Virtual Private Server (VPS) or, if you can afford it, a dedicated hosting plan.
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- How much space do you get for the price and what is their definition of ‘unlimited?’ Some web hosting providers have so-called unlimited storage and bandwidth for a few bucks a month but this ‘deal’ is often not what it seems. You generally end up getting what you pay for – if you pay $4 a month for hosting, your terms of service will likely contain lingo that allows your web host to either greatly throttle your speeds after you reach a certain threshold, or shut you down completely.
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- What type of support do they provide? Look for web hosting with tech support that can be utilized with telephone and/or live chat available, especially during peak traffic times, and email and ticket support are good as well, if they are in addition to the prior two support options.
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- Do they offer automatic backups? In this day and age, having regular and reliable backups of your business site is a no-brainer. Good white label managed wordpress hosting providers like BionicWP give 90-days of offsite backups in order to ensure the safety and integrity of your data at all times.
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- Do they automatically sweep for malware? Malware has been the bane of many businesses over the years and the two things that the experts solidly agree on is; malware will always be redeveloped and malicious users will continue their attempts at compromising as many systems as they possibly can, and that early detection of malware and removal from your system is key. Malware has costs business owners millions of dollars and it is imperative that your WP hosting company consistently strives to protect you and your customers by performing regular scans. BionicWP not only provides its customers with WordPress hosting but also daily WordPress security updates, malware scans and take the necessary and precautionary steps to ensure the customer’s website is completly protected.
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- Do they provide real-time uptime monitoring? If your business website is inaccessible, for any reason, it means that you are unable to process transactions and could likely be missing sales opportunities. You need reliable and consistent hosting and if there is an outage, you need someone to already be working on it by the time you are even alerted to the event.
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- Are core, theme and plugin updates free and automatic? A missed update can spell disaster. Many times updates are pushed out in order to plug discovered exploits or vulnerabilities and if miss, overlook or ignore a notice to update, you could be subject to unwanted attention. And even data loss.
One giant step that you can take in order to avoid web hosting nightmares, is to stay away from free web hosting altogether. As you go down the checklist above with any free provider, you’ll find that their answers are in the negative much more often than not.
However, the best defense against a nightmare host is BionicWP; your friendly WordPress experts for WordPress website hosting 😉
Feel free to reach out to us and have peace of mind that you didn’t know was possible for your business website and hosting needs. BionicWP will help you whenever you need, with whatever you need. Don’t leave the face of your virtual presence in the hands of free web hosts or amateurs – BionicWP is the solution you need, and the quality your company deserves.
