To make a selection and opt for the appropriate accommodation, it is necessary to clearly define your needs upstream, according to your project’s nature and specificities and technical skills. In order to make your choice more accessible, we are sharing a list of 10 criteria on which you can use to compare the different offers.
1. Cost and value for money
The first point of comparison is the cost of the proposed solutions versus your budget. This is, of course, an essential element, but it must absolutely be put because of the quality-price ratio. It is better to avoid favouring a low cost over quality service. As you can see in this IONOS review the price is low, but the provider is not rated well. Better performance, responsive support, and enhanced security, although sometimes at a higher price, will guarantee you better service than some low-cost offerings. Instead, compare the prices offered for the same characteristics. Conversely, there’s no point in getting oversized hosting that includes features you won’t need.
Note that the majority of hosts offer a fixed price with an annual or monthly payment. However, new offers are developing with pay-as-you-go pricing, especially with cloud computing. The price is set in proportion to the services used by your users.
2. Technical performance
To choose the best webhosting that is suitable for your project (e-commerce site, blog, intranet, etc.), consider the following:
- Bandwidth- You must check that bandwidth is compatible with your traffic forecasts, considering any peaks in attendance (linked to seasonality, growth, or a marketing campaign, for example) and the type of content offered (downloading, broadcasting media). The performance of your bandwidth will impact the loading time of the pages and elements of your site according to their consultation by Internet users.
- CPU load- This is the processing power of data and the execution of server requests. It is to be chosen according to the number of recommendations on your pages and their degree of complexity and will determine the speed at which the data of your site will be analyzed, distributed, and displayed.
- RAM and cache management- RAM or random access memory is used to temporarily store repetitive data and requests to speed up the response time of these elements.
- The amount of RAM available will determine the number of processes that can be run simultaneously. And to help you define it, assume that they can all work at the same time.
- Database and storage capacity- Server databases are used to store and manage the various data on your site. Several database management systems, and the number and storage capacity of allocated databases vary from one host to another.
3. Scalability and accessibility
The capacity to evolve should not be neglected, whether in the dimensioning or the characteristics of your webhosting or on the innovation side of the solutions offered by the host.
You must develop your site and you’re hosting without adding additional constraints (possibility of changing technology or web language, hosting, technical characteristics or even change of host, and data transfer, etc.). It is also essential that you can do it independently if you wish, and for this, the development possibilities are documented, understandable, and accessible.
And in a constantly changing field, it is also essential that hosts invest in research and development to support the technological evolution of their customers.
4. Location of servers
The geographic location of the rented servers can have several impacts on the service offered. However, this is a criterion retained by search engines as part of your natural referencing. It is therefore in your interest to choose accommodation located in the country where your target is located. For a French-speaking site intended for a French audience, it is preferable to favor a server hosted in France for better consistency.
In addition, choosing a web host whose services are based in the same territory as you can also more easily guarantee customer service that is more easily accessible and speaks the same language as yours.
Another essential element, the location of the servers, determines the legislation applicable to the hosted data. Given the obligations and legal disparities observed, this is a point to be taken into consideration.
5. Security, quality of infrastructure, and assistance support
Although the security of a site also depends on its design, its webhosting does not have any security holes. So be careful with the inclusion of firewalls, monitoring services, and automatic backups and updates, and learn about its ability to protect your data in the event of hacking, failure, or bad weather.
Also, follow the number of breakdowns that may have affected the infrastructure over the last few months to get an opinion on the host’s reliability. Finally, the quality of the assistance support may vary from one host to another. Therefore, favor responsive customer service. Note that international hosts will be better structured but will potentially have more requests to process.
Conclusion
Many players are positioned in the field of webhosting around the world. With the multiplicity of offers and the increasing evolution of technical characteristics, the range of possibilities can seem dizzying.
