Choosing the Best Shared Hosting Plan

Choosing the Best Shared Hosting Plan

Choosing the Best Shared Hosting Plan

To begin with, web hosting is a service which makes your website available on the Internet to be viewed by others. It will provide you with a space on its server so that others can access your website.  There are literally thousands of web hosting services offered today and many come with high prices. So when it comes to starting your first website, getting a Shared Hosting Plan is a great idea. This means that your Web Hosting Service Plan is shared to a large web server with other plan holders. Many WordPress blog and website owners use Shared Hosting Plans because of its affordability with rates just ranging from $3.95 per month to $9.95 per month. In choosing the best shared hosting plan there is today, you not only expand your business but also save money.

Shared Web Hosting Plans in the market today is by far the most affordable and cheapest web hosting plan. Although you have shared server with others, your stuffs can’t be accessed by other plan holders. What you have to think of though is the speed of your website. With a shared Hosting Plan, your website might slow down due to high traffic. The list below then will help you in choosing the best shared hosting plan most suited for your need.

Choosing the Best Shared Hosting Plan

Briefer: Choosing the Best Shared Hosting Plan

So to start with, you have already a website or materials ready to be uploaded to the internet. What you need now is a hosting plan on which you can anchor your website. Basically, you have to start with knowing what your hosting needs. What kind of a website are you planning to publish? Do you want something more familiar with others like WordPress blog? Will you need Windows application? Do you need a special application like PHP? How big (or small) do you think your web traffic volume may go? These are the basic questions you need to question your self.

Have a quick overview and picture what you want for your website. Figure out what you want to happen to your website for the next 12 months.

Investigate: Is the host reliable and has uptime guarantees?

The most important thing in web hosting is to have a 24/7 operation. The Shared Hosting Plan provider must have stable network connections and operates on powerful servers. It is always recommended to have a 99.5% and above uptime score. Anything that goes below 99% is not acceptable.

There are multiple ways to obtain the host uptime information. One way is to do some quick readings on hosting reviews. Alternatively,  you can use your own server monitor tools to track your web host. These are easy to use and many comes free on trial.

Study: Upgrading Options of Web Host

Shared web hosting providers are pretty powerful today.

A shared hosting account should be able to support a proper-optimized WordPress blog having 25,000 – 35,000 monthly unique visitors. It is alright to have a shared host if you manage to limit your simultaneous database connections somewhere below 20. However, if you expect for you website to grow popular for the next or two years, then you should consider choosing a web host where you can easily grow. This means that you can easily upgrade your web host. So from a shared hosting, you can easily switch to a virtual private or dedicated server which have more powerful processors, disk storage, memory storage and better security features.

Check: All Hosting Features based on your Needs

Domain names are extremely affordable. They are so cheap that owning one is very hard to resist. That is why many people today own more than just 6 domains. Others can even go with over 25 domains. So to accommodate these many domains, a web hosting with extra space is needed. This is where a web host company which allows adding multiple domains is important.

Generally speaking, most affordable shared hosting providers allow at least 20 addon domains. Addon domain means that a separate website of a different domain is hosted on the same web host. Finding a Shared Web Host which allows you with multiple addon domains is a wise choice. After all, you can never be too sure these days.

Examine: Prices on both Sign Up and Renewal

In hosting deals today, especially on Shared Hosting, prices are normally offered on very cheap amount but charge suddenly sky rocket on renewals. And this is a norm in the industry.

Unless you are willing to change between three or four web hosts every three years, there is in no way you can avoid the pricey renewal costs. Basically, any shared hosting plan is priced below the $10 per month mark. This is acceptable. But you have to give a lower tolerance. So in order to avoid any unpleasant surprise from your web host, check their Terms of Service first. Make sure you are okay with the way they renew their prices before you signup.

 Useful Tip: to easily find the Terms of Service of a host company, go to their link and press Ctrl + F. Search for “renewal” or “renew” in their TOS. Do this for choosing the best shared hosting plan.

Inspect: Refund Policy

Before signing up to any Shared Web Host, you should have to know these basic questions. Are there any cancellation charges should you choose to cancel your account? Does the host provider return your full payment if you cancel your account during the trial period? What are the refund policies of the Web Host after the trial session?

It is extremely important to know the answers to these questions. In this way, you don’t have to lose so much money when things don’t go according to your liking. Therefore, know your web host provider’s customer refunds.

There are some hosting companies where cancellation charges are insanely high when users choose to cancel their account during their trial period. The advice? Avoid these kind of web hosting providers in any cost. On the flip side, some web hosting companies offer money back guarantees anytime where you can have a pro-rated refund after your subscribed trial period. Good eh?

Probe: the Control Panel of the Account

What you need for your day-in-day-out operations are basic features like Auto Scrip Installer (like Installatron, Fantastico, Quick Installer, Simple Scripts, Softaculous and many others) for easy web application installations and updates. A Server Side Include (SSI) can give your website an easier site maintenance (especially if you are planning for a static website). A .htaccess can access for page directs or security purposes. And FTP access can give an easier file transfer. Never settle for a shared web host provider which do not offer them.

For now: Ignore Disk Space and Data Transfer Capacity

Data transfers and disk space hardly have an important comparison factors for buyers (especially for newbies) these days. First of all, if you check, almost all shared hosting providers offer you with an “unlimited” data transfers and storage. Although the word “unlimited” is but a marketing tool, shared web host users get more than the needed capacity storage and data transfer. In most cases, the processor power and random-access memory limit usage is what the the unlimited hosting account give.

In addition, if you think it through, bandwidth and disk storage doesn’t even matter to a website owner today. Files, images and videos can now be stored on Flickr, Google Doc, YouTube and Vimeo. Large data files, on the other hand, can be stored to cloud storage. Basically, you don’t have to worry so much on your web hosting bandwidth or storage for now.

So in conclusion, choosing the best shared hosting plan to which you can anchor your website depends on your needs. So whether you are starting your own website for business or personal use, use these guidelines for choosing the best shared hosting plan.

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Written by:

Ryan Jacob

Ryan Jacob has 9 years of rich experience in Integrated Marketing Communications and Server Management. He has lead teams of professionals in his career and built online and offline reputation of organizations.

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