- All right, you come up with a great idea,
you're excited about what the future holds,
now let's get online right now, buy some cheap hosting
and get going, right?
- No, wrong.
It's so easy to just jump into the deep end
and then realize much too late
that you don't know how to swim.
So let's talk about what web hosting is.
In its most basic terms,
web hosting is the service that enables an individual
or an organization to publish a website on the internet.
And while we might think that a website
is something that only exists digitally,
physical resources are also needed
to power internet content, mainly in the form of servers.
Different websites have different needs,
so a variety of web hosting services exist.
The type that's best for your business
will depend on a variety of things,
including the type of business,
the amount of website traffic,
and how many visual assets are on your site.
Additionally, there are a lot of hosting companies
that offer different options.
So when evaluating a web hosting provider,
we've got a few factors for you to consider.
- So the first factor to look out for is the average uptime,
which is the average amount of time your website stays up
within a given period of time.
And your website's average uptime is important
because it can affect how much traffic your website gets,
which is important, right?
Your website won't be getting much traffic
if visitors can't access it when they visit.
Just one hour of downtime means your business
is already losing a lotta potential sales
and this is why you'd want your average uptime to be 100%
or as close to it as possible.
And an average uptime below 99.9%
means you should start looking
for a different web hosting provider.
- That's right, Emma.
And another major factor that you have to consider
is page load time,
which is the amount of time it takes for a webpage to load.
Similar to uptime, your page load time
affects how much traffic your website gets.
And this is because the slower your webpage loads,
the more frustrated the visitor gets.
A study by Google revealed
that 53% of mobile site visitors leave
if it takes more than three seconds to load a page.
It's for this reason that you want a web host
that can provide page load times of three seconds or less.
- Now let's talk about support, we all need it
and getting helpful customer support
means you can deal with website problems faster
and more effectively.
And web hosting providers usually offer phone, chat,
or ticket-based customer support,
but what really matters is how quickly they can respond
and how knowledgeable their support team is.
- I mean, Emma supports me every day,
which is why we keep doing this.
But the next thing we wanna talk about here is the pricing
and then the renewal pricing.
Every business is looking to make a profit.
In order to do so,
you have to be willing to invest some money into it first,
I mean, we all know that.
But if you're just starting out,
you may not wanna spend your life savings
on an expensive hosting plan.
You also may not wanna cheap out on features
if you're running a website for a major brand.
Another thing to watch out for when it comes to pricing
is the cost of renewing your account.
You might be surprised to find the renewal cost
is actually higher than your initial payment
when you signed up.
That's to be expected,
but make sure it's not too much of a price hike
for your budget.
- All right, now let's talk about bandwidth and storage.
Web hosting bandwidth, if you are wondering
is the amount of data
that a website can deliver to its visitors
over a certain period of time.
So the higher bandwidth a web hosting provider offers,
guess what?
The better.
Similar to bandwidth, the more storage you get, the better.
Storage or disk space is self-explanatory.
It determines the amount of site content you can store,
which includes text, images, code, databases,
and even emails.
- Even though we talk about this one a lot,
and that is SSL.
Some web hosting providers offer free SSL
as part of their plans,
but ultimately, an SSL certificate
creates an encrypted connection and establishes trust.
It adds that padlock icon before your URL
and puts the S in HTTPS.
They help secure your website transactions
by encrypting any information going through it
and this is important, especially for e-commerce websites.
- The last major factor to consider are backups
and your web hosting provider
should ideally offer regular website backups
or at least make it easy for you to do yourself.
And a website backup is a copy of your website
and helps keep your website up and running
and it prevents you from losing
all your website progress and data.
if something unfortunate occurs.
- Finding a web hosting provider
is an important part of building your website.
Finding the right one may be a make or break
for your business,
but a little online research
will help to find the web hosting of your dreams.
- All right, that's a wrap,
but your journey doesn't have to end here
'cause we have over 300 videos for you to watch.
- So be sure to like, comment, subscribe.
This is The Journey.
We'll see you next time.