Website hosting plans are available across a wide price range starting from as low as few dollars to as high as thousands of dollars. Here, we will discuss what is website hosting plans, what are the different website hosting plans available in the market, how should we select the best host, and finally which one we suggest like kinsta alternative.
What is Hosting and Types of Hosting Plans?
Web hosting is essentially a method of leveraging a server to host a website. This allows companies and individuals to create a website on the world wide web. Shared, dedicated, and VPS hosting are key web hosting plans available.
- Shared Hosting – In shared hosting, many company websites and individual blogs leverage the same server. It is advised that you start with shared hosting and progress to VPS or a dedicated plan depending upon how your website plays out.
- The downside of using a shared hosting service is that all resources, such as bandwidth, are shared by several users sometimes negatively affecting website performance
- VPS hosting – VPS or virtual private server is a plan where a server is segregated into virtual machines that operate as independent dedicated servers. This plan offers greater flexibility as compared with shared hosting as a larger chunk of resources are dedicated to a single user
- Dedicated hosting: In a dedicated web hosting plan, an entire server is allocated to one website. These provide the clients with complete control over the resources such as operating systems and security systems. These plans are the most expensive considering the control they offer to the website owner
What to keep in mind while selecting a plan?
As we know that the current site traffic, traffic expectation, and server load are important while selecting a hosting plan, the type of website also determines the choice of hosting. Few hosting companies focus upon large clients such as eCommerce, whereas others focus upon blogging.
Newbie hosting clients are naturally attracted to web hosting plans that offer the most features with the least fees. However, I would suggest that rather than being swayed by the offers, find out the plan that suits your requirement the most.
How to select an affordable plan?
Based on our assessment and expert recommendations, customers should evaluate and compare the website hosting providers on the following parameters:
- Client feedback or rating: These are a better evaluation criterion than editor review as a feedback/rating highlights the USP or the challenges faced by the user
- Tech support: The strength of technical support available from the website hosting provider is crucial. It helps the website owner to focus on the task at hand and rely on the website hosting provider for security, installation, and maintenance
- Evaluate the type of server offered: Assess the load on the website and then see what kind of server is the most suitable. Shared server (the cheapest available as several websites share a sever), Virtual private server (VPS, a server is virtually dedicated to a user), dedicated server (a server is dedicated to one website) and cloud server (scalability is extremely easy with this, in this plan, a web of many resources and servers is shared among many computers)
- The scalability offered: This helps the customer evaluate the headroom for growth
- Security offered
- Uptime range: Website hosting providers typically promise a predefined uptime and if they fall short of it, customers are accordingly compensated. However, its good to check the uptime and understand how long do they typically take to restore
- Pricing: This is one of the most critical parameters while selecting a web hosting plans for a website hosting provider, for instance, HostingRaja – one of the leading hosting providers – offer website hosting plans for as low as Rs.85/month for small businesses that includes 100GB SSD web space, 20GB bandwidth and 50 email support, among other features
- Study the contract terms in detail: Getting into a 2-3 years contract will help you obtain better rates. Do consider the renewal rates,as renewal rates tend to significantly go up during the renewal process, so be careful of that
- Page loading speed: A page that loads slowly can be a major dampener for the site visitor. Do look out for plans that assure a good page loading speed and a high uptime
- Look for discounts: It is always beneficial to fish out for discounts, coupons, and other such promotional schemes to reduce cost hosting cost
- Customer care responsiveness: Prompt query resolution will go a long way to smoothen out the hosting experience for you and ensure that there is no client loss due to the website going offline
- Clients served: This will help you develop confidence in the web hosting plans and provider and also assess which web hosting plans your competitors are using
- Content management systems: Ensuring that your site is not restricted to any 1 host is crucial. Perform periodic updates and site backups to keep systems up-to-date
Conclusion about Web Hostig Plans [HostingRaja]
If you are a small business and looking for a cheap web hosting plans, then picking up a shared hosting plan will be the most advisable plan of action for you, as they start for as low as $0.99 monthly.
If you own mid-size website business, one can select from the several available VPS options. You can also select a cloud web hosting plans if your website witnesses sudden traffic spikes.
For a high traffic website, such as eCommerce, cloud hosting is an ideal choice as it offers high flexibility and scalability.
If you have any queries and suggestions related to this article, do let us know your thoughts via the comments section below.