Website Hosting: Where’s the Best Place to Host Your Site?

When it comes to website hosting, there is no shortage of options out there, choosing one can be overwhelming. The place where you host your website is crucial as it impacts your website’s availability, performance, security and user experience. Before shopping for the best website hosting, there are a few important things to know.

VPS plans are flexible in nature, they give you more server resources at affordable costs. This plan is best for websites experiencing a growing phase.

With a dedicated plan, you have an entire server and its resources at your disposal. You have complete control over every hosting aspect of your website and receive 24/7 backend support. A dedicated plan is the most expensive hosting option.

Assess your requirements

A shared hosting plan is best if you are just launching a website that is small or medium in scale. This plan is best because it helps you control costs. As your business grows, you could scale to a VPS (Virtual Private Server) or dedicated hosting plan.

Consider specialised hosting services

There are hosting providers that focus on specific websites. There are WordPress web hosts to help you with your WordPress website. Go for providers that offer more than just WordPress installation services. Look for pre-installed programs, unlimited bandwidth, and extensive backend support. Other specialised hosting packages include e-commerce hosting and website builder services.

What to look for in a website hosting provider

Excellent server uptime.

Server uptime refers to the amount of time your server will be available and working. Your server uptime must be 99.5% or more, for you to experience a stable network. Check a hosting provider’s online reviews to find out about its uptime, there are also free server monitoring tools online to calculate a host’s uptime.

Generous room for scaling.

If your business is growing, your website hosting must match your needs accordingly. Go to a service provider that has the options to support you when your business is scaling. Look for packages with more storage, greater processing capabilities, and advanced security features, suitable for your growing business.

Continuous security.

A significant share of website hacks trace back to a loophole in the hosting service itself. Be sure to check a hosting provider’s security options, this should include monitoring for security issues and resolution, availability of firewall protection, and extra security features. Regular backup services and WordPress security updating make the web host more reliable.

Complete backend support.

Your service provider must be available and responsive, through different communication channels including phone, email and messaging services. It should have a rapid response time to security emergencies. Online and social media reviews are a good way of finding out the reliability of a provider in this aspect.

Why choose Australian website hosting?

If you’re running an Australian business, a local website hosting provider is the ideal choice. Here’s why.

Quicker service speeds and a more convenient user experience.

Generally speaking, local businesses attract local customers. So for an Australian business to have its website hosted by an overseas provider means that, even though the business and the potential customers visiting the website are in Australia, each request to navigate between pages needs to travel all the way to the other side of the world and back.

This means slower response times, bigger delays between each click, and a less convenient experience for the user. This can cause potential customers to grow frustrated with your website, and go with a competitor instead. By choosing Australian website hosting, everything remains local and service speeds will be much faster.

Better Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

Think of search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo! as having little insects that crawl all over the internet, retrieving data from every website and bringing it back to the nest for cataloguing. This is how search engines know which websites belong in which internet searches, and in which order.

If your Australian website is exclusively visited by Australian users, but hosted overseas, these little insects are likely to get confused. When it comes to SEO, confusion is bad, search engines will favour Australian-hosted sites over yours, and you’ll appear further down the list. Needless to say, this is bad for business.

Easier access to support.

If you’re experiencing technical issues or require customer support for whatever reason, getting in touch with a local Australian website hosting provider is going to be much easier than one that’s based overseas. Even with chatbots, time difference can cause a simply-resolved issue to drag out over a few days with tedious back-and-forth communications. In regards to scheduled maintenance and system upgrades, an overseas host is likely to conduct these during their own off-peak times, if this happens to fall right in the middle of the day in Australia, you’ll find your website offline during your own peak periods.

It’s good to support local businesses.

Supporting local Australian businesses is always preferable to lining the pockets of large-scale international corporations. By keeping your website hosting subscriptions local, you’re also avoiding international payment fees and the unpredictability of conversion rates and foreign economies.

Managed vs. self-managed website hosting: which is right for you?

Managed Hosting

Managed WordPress hosting means even more control without any hassle. With managed website hosting, all technical aspects of your website are taken care of including account set up, regular backups, updates, one-click restore, server optimisation and more, all you have to think about is making the most of your website.

The best way to secure your WordPress website is to update the software and plugins to the latest version, this keeps the latest vulnerabilities at bay. With automatic updates, you won’t have to worry about doing this yourself, you simply have to think about generating new content and managing conversions. Your website is also backed up regularly, so any new change or update you make is recoverable if the worst happens.

As a business owner, you’re already juggling a lot, leading your team, managing your marketing strategy, managing clients, and more. With so much to handle, managing your website hosting should be one less thing to worry about.

Self Managed

Self-managed website hosting gives you complete control, with your own server that you manage yourself, your way. This is a perfect solution when you want to take control and manage it in a way that suits you. With full root and administrator access, you can install the software you want to.

With a self-managed server, the responsibility of managing the server rests with you. As your provider, we take care of server hardware and network availability, but you’re in control of everything else, installing applications and software, server security, configuring hosting and email settings, and applying OS and application updates.

Self-managed website hosting is for the pros. When you want complete control and freedom, this is the option you need. If you’re not sure which is right for you, ask yourself a few questions: Can I give time to manage my hosting? Am I comfortable with shell prompts? Do I need complete freedom? Am I okay with someone else managing my hosting for me? Can I take care of the security of my server? Will I be able to minimise the risks? Your answers will help you make an informed decision.

Benefits of managed website hosting plans

Managed website hosting plans are a great way to ease the pressure off yourself. Say goodbye to investing in server hardware and hiring dedicated personnel to manage it for you, you simply lease the use of a server from your provider, who manages it all for you from their premises.

Cost efficient.

You save yourself from a big investment at the outset, no investing in hardware, payroll, upgrades or maintenance. All of that is taken care of by your hosting service, you simply get the benefits while your provider handles the work.

Scalability.

If your growing business needs better hosting features, such as increased bandwidth, you simply upgrade your plan.

Latest technology.

As your host, this is our area of specialisation. Anytime there’s a new technology or better hardware and software, we upgrade accordingly, so you can be sure of the latest security, features and upgrades.

Hassle-free.

That’s the biggest benefit of managed website hosting. If you have a WordPress website, we update the plugins and software so you don’t have to worry about it, keeping your website updated and secure at all times.

In conclusion

Whether you’re choosing website hosting, deciding between managed and self-managed options, or working out which plan suits your business, the right choice comes down to your requirements, your comfort with technical management, and how much you want to hand off versus control yourself. Digital Developments offers a range of website hosting options for small, medium and large businesses. Get in touch today for expert advice or a free quote.