Given the circumstances the Covid-19 pandemic drowns the world in, people are desperate to create an impeccable online presence. Especially because they want to create inextinguishable business imprints in the e-markets.
To create a functional and lucrative website, people leverage various website hosting services. In 2019, the website hosting market size was estimated to be around $57.6 billion.
Now, with the speed the online industry is moving, it is forecasted that by 2027, the market will increase to an estimated value of $171.4 billion.
As easy and accessible as it is to create a catchy, user-friendly website, finding the right website hosting service can be bewildering simply because there are too many options.
From old-school yet popular servers like WordPress and Wix, people are starting to get intimated by cloud-based servers like Cloudways.
Website hosting is not as easy as it seems. Especially if you are unaware of what type of plan you should use. You may experience huge monetary and data loss with the wrong plan and hosting server.
To learn what plan you need and when is the right time to upgrade your website, stick with us until the end.
What Current Plan For Website Hosting Are You Using?
Different website hosting servers have different options and packages. There are basic plans that are often free, and then there are the premium packages with additional features and customization options that charge you a fee.
As a beginner, WordPress, Wix, Squarespace and similar options like Kinsta seem great, and they are. They are all well-integrated and excellently functional content delivery networks.
But, as technology advances and the internet is witnessing the biggest entrepreneurial paradigm online, the "need for speed" and other upgrade options with websites have become more pronounced.
If you have a website, you must be using any of the following types of website hosting:
Shared hosting:
It allows multiple people to use the same hosting server on a shared plan- and obviously, it is an economical option when you are just starting or do not need bulky storage spaces or specialized hosting features.
It can be great for business, and non-business sites as this plan offer basic building tools, custom domains, and satisfactory built-in functionality.
In 2019, the revenue generated from shared website hosting plans was 37.4% of the market share.
However, data security breaches are always a risk as your files are stored on a shared server. Also, a free or basic plan would often come with restricted web development features and offer an average speed.
Host servers like Wix, HostGator, DreamHost, and WordPress all provide the cheapest plan for website creation that you can settle for.
Virtual private servers- VPS
Even though this also provides a shared server for several people, it charges more money because it has better security features than the previous one. For example, your files and data are stored in specific storage spaces with protected resources.
Dedicated hosting
If you are looking for a server dedicated to your files and provides better performance, this one can be a good fit. As the entire physical server is yours, you get better functionality, and however, as you may have guessed already, the cost will be higher.
Managed hosting
In this type of website hosting plan, even though the server is dedicated to your website, it will be managed and maintained by a different provider. You will have to use the File Transfer Protocol or FTP to manage your content and follow other rules that come with the perks.
Cloud hosting
One of the newest and considerably safest hosting servers that do not break the back for you. Servers like Cloudways and Site Ground are making their place in the web hosting market with promising features and better speed while providing all types of web hosting at their best.
It is anticipated that gradually cloud hosting will become more commonly used than the WordPress (WP) Engine.
As discussed, five options, including the share and the non-shared hosting plan, are widely used- there are other home servers that you can use on your own.
If you are not content with your current hosting plan, you can always use a private server if you have a good research edge and ample technical knowledge.
Signs That Tell You Need to Explore Upgrade Website Hosting Options
You can choose from basic hosting plans to any expensive yet comprehensive plan. The key to hosting success is to learn the signs that navigate you to the upgrade process.
Here are some of the signs that tell you that it is time to get fancy with your website hosting and upgrade it.
1. Not-so-satisfying website performance
The two biggest determinants of your website's success are its performance and speed. Nobody wants to wait minutes before a site uploads and functions. On the other hand, people expect a website to load within seconds as Cloudways do.
Cloudways offers less than 0.5 seconds of loading time compared to many other websites hosting servers.
WPEngine and Kinsta hosting plans involve a specific number of visitors every month.. Let us say, for instance, they have a "100,000 visits plan." do you think it would guarantee a super-fast and high-performance website for each visitor?
Not certainly, as this specific number is more of an assumption, with a certainty that there can be more visitors. Then what? Will the "extra" visitors not be able to leverage the plan efficiently? Cloudways does not define such numbers and offers equity in every aspect for the visitors to create state-of-the-art websites.
As tested, the Cloudways plan is easy on the pocket while serving way more visitors than its competition, such as Kinsta and WordPress Engine.
Moreover, a slow website can lead to a bad experience and down your website on the "search engine ranking" chart. If you do not invest in the speed and performance of your website, you will have a hard time ranking on the first page of Google or any other search engine.
The best way to test and analyze your website's performance and speed with the current type of hosting you are using is just to open your website on your mobile phone and hit the refresh button.
If it refreshes quickly, all is well, and it needs no upgrade. But, if it takes a lot of time and infuriates you, it is the right time to undergo the upgrade process.
2.Your website is getting too much traffic
With the visitors to the website, the more is always merrier, but not when you are not prepared for the spike in organic traffic.
If you fail to anticipate such a big surge, especially when planning a great product or service launch on your website, the visitor will experience a "traffic jam" in the form of an "error message" on your web pages. And we all know that traffic issues can be devastating for you and your business.
If you plan to start small, your worries will be small, too, and you will be able to stick to basic plans with a simple upgrade. However, if you want to go big with your launch, personal blog promotion, or any other business shenanigans, you will have to plan big as well.
When your business is booming, and you are growing fast, you would need to slightly expand your budget. Yet a dedicated webmaster with a dedicated server plan allows you to leverage the bandwidth and unmetered disk space.
A popular choice for dedicated hosting plans as offered by WPEngine and Cloudways gives you complete control over the server resources with better MB storage and a user experience that leads to giant amounts of traffic.
Moreover, they offer DDoS protection, diverse options for hard drives, unlimited bandwidth, and excellent performance firewalls.
So, before you want your content to break the internet and go viral, it would be best to upgrade your hosting for all the heavy lifting that would be required to do.
3.Frequent downtime
If you go on a website, what kind of experience do you want? To open it on the first try, right?
As they say, the first impression can be the last; if the website does not open as soon as you click it, you will not visit it again. In addition, hosting servers like DreamHost and WordPress offer 99% uptime, while Cloudways offer 100% uptime that loads your website in less than a blink of an eye.
And if your current plan is not giving you the required uptime, upgrade it to acquire better support and resources.
The significance of a website's uptime cannot be understated. If a visitor is unable to access your website on their first attempt, they may never return, and this presents an unprofessional image. If you're not obtaining 99.9% uptime and fast load speeds from your web host, it's time to increase your hosting package to include more resources and assistance.
4.Security issues
Your website will be your business's biggest asset. It is a "show and tell" avenue for all the e-visitors who want to learn about your online venture. So, if your website is not secure and you experience a data breach, it will be quite troublesome.
As your website grows in size and number, the first step is to shift to non-shared hosting plans if the current one is shared. Next, you need to get better built-in security features.
Even though there is no hosting server that offers 100% web security, there are some like Cloudways that provide advanced security features like dedicated firewalls, click-free SSL installation to avoid viruses, a two-step authentication process, bot protection, and more.
If even your existing paid plans are not offering these features, it is high time you upgrade your website hosting to the one that does.
5.Restricted resources and lack of customization
With the growth of your site grows the user activity as well. You would need plenty of features like editing tools, customization, and disk space as well. Usually, any basic, free, or shared plan does not offer these features, and you will have to upgrade to another hosting surface to unwind more resources.
Moreover, graphics such as catchy videos and many images attract more people. And people would want to load them instantly- as you know, the internet ninjas have the patience of a hummingbird.
Getting straight to the point, you will need advanced design tools (also some attractive SEO tools) to optimize and customize your media content. The premium plans or any other powerful plan for website hosting will offer compression, lazy load, and excellent formatting to speed up your site and help with media content.
6. You need a sandbox or demo site for your clients
When you are new in business or have a knack for trying new ideas, you also need to leverage certain advanced tools. Cloudways hosting servers allow business websites to leverage various features like a sandbox environment or a demo site.
Such advanced features allow your website to showcase your ideas and talent to clients on an abundance of platforms.
7. You need to boost performance with better optimization and SEO
On your website, you will have blog posts, media content, product descriptions, and much more, and you will need to optimize the entire website to rank higher on search engines.
From settings dashboard on your site to diverse blogging platforms, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is what makes it discoverable and accessible to the audience.
Therefore, even if you settle for an affordable option for web hosting with adequate design functionality, you will need access to SEO tools. But, as already mentioned multiple times, as your site grows, you will need to upgrade your hosting plan. This time with the one that offers advanced SEO functionality.
If you want to step into the competitive online market, try to get your hands on a good web hosting server from the start. So even if you want to get some upgrades later, you can save a lot of time and money on the website setup process and the migration process.
Conclusion
From tackling traffic density to handling the bandwidth breakdown and the need for additional drive space or advanced SEO features, you need a one-stop solution for all your website hosting problems.
If you are tired of changing from one hosting platform to another, try Cloudways or Site Ground and see the wonders it does to resolve your server issues.
We are not saying it is an ideal choice because words are not worth it without actions. However, we want you to try the basic plan first, and if it works for you, you can always take advantage of premium features.
Get started with the best, and let your avant-garde website rule the front pages of every search engine.
