What is website hosting?
Many businesses today either want to forgo the hassles or can’t afford the added expenses of housing their websites. Utilizing the services of a website host becomes a great option that can be a big cost saver! When you sign on with a website hosting service, you are renting space they have on their servers. Most web hosting in Baltimore, MD offers different options to provide versatility to their potential users.
What should you look for?
There are many considerations when looking for the right service to meet your needs. Reliability is key to a customer’s experience interacting with your site. It should load quickly, transition between pages smoothly, and provide the features that you need on a consistent basis. You want reliability to be the experience day in and day out. When a website is reliable, your customers will be likely to return again and again.
Another aspect to consider is the need for speed. In the old days of the internet, customers were much more patient while pages loaded and transitioned. Today, we are used to lightning-fast internet speeds, so anything less than instant will be a huge turn-off for your customers. Fast web hosting in Baltimore, MD is critical to companies.
Another consideration is the space needed for your website. It is helpful to have some insight into the traffic expected on your website, how many pages you have/need, and what types of interactions and media you will include on your site. Some sites also limit the size of file uploads as well. All of this impacts not only the size of the site but also the bandwidth needed for your volume of visitors and managing uploads. Some sites have limits on all three, so look before you leap!
Scalability is also something to think about before you buy. Do they offer you opportunities to upgrade your site, expand your pages, and provide additional functionality? You want to have room to grow.
Finally, you may also want to be thinking about how much time and resources you have to manage the site once it goes live. Some sites also offer management of your site in addition to housing it. This is helpful when updating content, providing patching, operating system updates, and monitoring and security. You will want to consider these if you don’t have the budget or human resources to provide this important ongoing work.
Types of Hosting
There are several different kinds of hosting offered by providers. Again, knowing what you are looking for and what your company needs, is essential when making a good decision. Here are the main types and a brief description of each.
Shared Web Hosting – This is when your site is uploaded to a server along with other sites. These are relatively inexpensive and better for a smaller web presence.
VPS Hosting – Virtual private servers, or VPS, dedicates a server to your site in a private niche, while also providing private spaces for other as well. It is a step up from a shared site, but not quite a dedicated server for yours alone. Again, this is a good option when the web presence is smaller and offers a bit more flexibility. This is also still a less expensive option.
Dedicated Hosting – A server is dedicated to your website, often at a data center. It provides a high level of flexibility and control over the resources and technology, but technical management is a must, either by your company or outsourced to a managed service provider.
Cloud Hosting – another cloud computing option, this is a great option, particularly for larger enterprises with equally larger, more complex sites with lots of traffic. It offers a high rate of reliability and also scalability.
If you are looking for a web hosting company in Baltimore, MD, especially one utilizing SEO services to make sure your company rises to the top of the search rankings, contact us at Klik Digital for more information on our fast and reliable hosting services.