Owning a business is a huge deal. Especially when clients want to shift their offline small-scale business online. Establishing a small business online is not a piece of cake. It involves making a lot of difficult decisions along the way. For example, the first decision-making situation arises when you look for an apt web hosting company. In order to launch an online website, they often look for the most scalable, reliable, reputed, and effective hosting service. So, getting to know more about web hosting is a mandatory thing. 

Around 80% of small businesses fail because business owners do not put much thought into web hosting services. In order to be one of the companies, among the 20% which excels, you need to know the important aspects which should not be ignored while choosing a site host company. 

Causes For A Small Business To Fail 

Business owners do not prioritize the need to compare and analyze the services each company might offer. The owners should check whether the hosting company is reputed, equipped with all the necessary services that you might need, their capability, and last but not least, make sure they have an effective customer service team to guide you through issues you might face along the way. 

Before going into the important aspects, a small-scale business should know, here are a few interesting facts about web hosting services.

• Around 65% of small-scale businesses own a website.
• The Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of the Global Web Hosting market is expected to increase by 15.9% annually till the year 2023.
• The market value is said to reach 76.2 billion dollars by the end of 2023. 
• According to the recently collected data, there are around 359.8 million domains hosted around the world.
• The United States of America is known to own the highest number of domains.

Now, let’s move on to the important features that a small-scale business must know regarding web hosting.

Important Aspects

Mentioned below are a few questions, who’s answers you need to know in order to become a successful online business owner. 

1. What does a web hosting company actually provide?

A hosting company makes sure that your business is smoothly launched over the internet. The hosting company makes the contents of your business accessible to all the intended users around the world. They are also responsible for the smooth functions of the website. 

• Website management 

The hosting company will make sure that the hosted website performs in an efficient manner. Speed, performance, traffic, updating and patching, scalability, etc will be managed by the web hosts.

• 24 / 7 Support 

A stable support team must be in place, to clarify all the queries and concerns clients might raise. The customer support team must be ready to take up any questions and provide their clients with the best solutions.

• Security 

Cyberspace is not at all a safe place, so everything present in it should be constantly monitored and protected. The web hosts must have high-end tools to keep your website away from the reach of hackers or attackers. They should provide strong safety measures and take precautionary steps to keep your site away from any form of breaches.

2. What are the available types of web hosting?

There are quite a few types of web hosting services. Business owners must choose the type of hosting based on their requirements. And the main types of hosting are as follows:

• VPS Hosting (Virtual Private Server) 

The features of Virtual private server hosting (VPS) are very similar to shared hosting features. The main difference between them is that VPS hosting provides a dedicated private space for its clients whereas shared hosting does not.

• Dedicated Hosting 

If you like to have your space for yourself and stay undisturbed, dedicated hosting is the “go-to”. Dedicated hosting is quite expensive. But, this is acceptable as there will be no need to share your resource with any other clients. 

• Shared Hosting 

Shared hosting is a great option for start-ups and entry-level sites. In this type of hosting a single server is shared by multiple websites. As shared hosting is cost efficient it is a great option for budget constraint companies.

• Cloud Hosting 

This type of hosting is on demand. Cloud hosting is known to be very safe and secure and it can be called a hybrid of VPS.

3. What are the basic features that one should know about web hosting?

Here is some of the basic feature that every company should have:

• Bandwidth 

Better bandwidth will contribute to the overall performance of the website. Websites with higher traffic should turn to higher bandwidth so that the site will perform in a smooth manner, rather than crashing.

• SSL Certificate From the security point of view, an SSL certificate is mandatory. In order to establish a secure connection between the server and the browser, an SSL certificate is used. Nowadays only sites with an SSL certificate can be trusted. 

• cPanel  

This is a graphical user interface that is Linux-based. The is fully equipped with all the latest high-end features that are needed so that a site can perform smoothly.

• Backup 

Backup is very essential. This is one of the major features that you should look for in a hosting plan that is provided by the hosting company. There are various back types that are available. Make sure to choose the one that suits your needs the most.

Make sure that the web hosting company you choose has all these.

4. What are your needs?

Select a web hosting company that has the capacity to satisfy your needs by providing your site with good performance, high-end security, better scalability, and the ability to manage sites effectively.

5. How to choose the best hosting provider which is suitable for you?

Just because a specific company is good for others, doesn’t mean that it will be the same for you. The required functionalities of each client differ. So, choose the web host based on your requirements.

Conclusion

These are the key pointers every small-scale business owner must know about web hosting. This is simple information that will help you all the way. So, take your time to relax, research and then see your site in excel.