In this article, I will help you assess whether your hosting is of quality. This way you will know if you should change it now or give it another chance at the end of your contract.
It is common for people to buy hosting because they see an ad on television or on the Internet, or because it has been recommended by a friend.
Unfortunately, it is also not uncommon to be dissatisfied with the service after requesting it. It’s probably too late to ask for a refund (assuming you have a money-back guarantee).
You have already paid for the service, so you do not feel comfortable changing accommodation. They think “I’ve paid for it, so let’s use it.” This is very understandable.
However, in some cases, it is better to switch directly. Because this hosting is detrimental to your reputation, web positioning and project.
Sometimes even though your hosting works fine, there are common problems and attacks that you will have to pay the price for.
Factors to recognize a hosting is of quality
Let’s see if your web hosting is a good option or a real disaster.
Many people choose hosting because they like what they see in the ads or because it is cheap. They forget something really important.
If you are in doubt as to whether your accommodation is good or not, leave it at that.
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Technical characteristics
The hardware and resources assigned by the provider are the key to knowing if the hosting can meet your needs.
This will affect not only the functionality of the server, but also the hosting plan that you have contracted. You can’t say you want to have your cake and eat it too.These are the factors that you need to consider.
Storage space.
This is the storage space on the server assigned by the provider; It is important to ensure that you have enough storage space as you need it for your website to function properly.
To install a CMS like WordPress, it is advisable to have 1GB of disk space; the larger your website (pages, articles, plugins), the more storage space you will need.
Monthly transfers
Every time a website is loaded, the server must send this information to the user’s browser. Taking into account that each page of the website (Home, About, Contact) has a certain amount of space (1, 2 or 3 MB), we can conclude that each user is consuming these resources of the hosting plan.
In fact, this is not the case. In most cases, the caching system is activated by both the hosting provider and your own website, so what is actually loaded is not the entire page, but the copy that is already stored.
In any case, this amount of data transfer is accounted for monthly by your provider. If you exceed the contracted limit, or additional charges are charged, or if your site stops working.
As you can see, it is something to keep in mind. Calculating the amount you need is not easy. This is because it depends on many variables, such as the weight of each page, the cache, or the amount of traffic. For starters, 50 GB should be enough.
SSD hard drive
One of the most important factors affecting the performance of your server, and therefore the loading speed of your website, is the technology of the hard drive.
Traditionally HDD discs (those with the smallest needles) have been used with certain improvements to make them a little faster. However, this is not enough for a hard drive that is used 24 hours a day and wears out.
You need a very fast hard drive that doesn’t heat up and doesn’t lose performance over time. The answer is a solid state drive (SSD).
SSD drives are much faster because there are no mechanical parts to slow them down. It is a set of chips that exchange information in the form of flash (rays of light).
Customer service and support
Therefore, it is very important that a reliable hosting company has a fast, courteous and efficient support team.
It is also highly recommended that they have many communication channels to attend to your questions and problems. The channels they should have are email, tickets, chat, and phone.
It is normal not to have all four, but if you do not have any of them, you should not use the phone. In the event of a serious incident (especially an attack or a crash) on your website, it is important to have a direct and quick way to contact them, and the phone is the best option.
Technical support
The accommodation is very technical. Computer science, pure and simple. It is a mixture of systems and programming. Therefore, there are not one but two advanced subjects.
Most of us who use shared hosting are not trained in this area, so we are interested in whether the provider will do the technical support work in case something goes wrong.
The Internet never sleeps, so it is important to have permanent assistance.
Customer support
We wanted to separate customer support from actual support. Often times, you don’t need someone to solve your technical problems, but you do need someone to solve your technical, business or administrative problems.
It is true that this matter is not as urgent as a technical incident, but you will appreciate the speed and accuracy of the response.
You can also do a test before applying for accommodation. A phone call, a chat or an email is all it takes. Ask them about things that are not clear on the sales page, such as the amount of RAM available for a particular plan or what happens when you reach the monthly transfer limit.
Free migration
It is a good idea to check before applying for the accommodation. If you have a website with another provider and you don’t know how to move it to your new provider, a migration service can save you a lot of headaches.
If you buy a new hosting and that hosting does not include a free migration service, you have a serious problem. However, there is also good news. If you use WordPress, the migration process is pretty straightforward with Duplicator. Email migration is a bit more complicated.
However, if you use a hosting company that does not offer migration services, you should be careful. If you don’t make it easy for potential customers to migrate to your servers, you haven’t earned their trust.
Performance
Your website is your virtual showcase. If it’s not quick, your visitors will go elsewhere. 1 second or less is a great time; 1-2 seconds is more or less correct; 2 seconds or more is too short; If it takes more than 3 seconds, your visitors will go elsewhere.
There are two points to distinguish here: one is the performance of the website (loading speed) and the other is the performance of the server (speed and stability).
Whether a website is fast or not depends on two main factors
- Server quality: It must be a powerful and optimized machine for maximum performance.
- Web Optimization – There are many factors that can make your website load faster and you need to work on such as caching, image compression, and using the latest stable version of PHP.
We will tell you what tools we use to analyze the best hosting to measure both the responsiveness and stability of your server and the speed of the websites hosted on it.
We use the following tools to evaluate the performance of our servers
- B enchmark Script: Analyze the PHP language runtime on the server. This code is used to make the Content Management System (CMS) work. Unlike the normal operations, you have to download the file, upload it to your hosting and enter the URL of your website and /bench.php in your browser.
- L oad Impact: Checks the stability of the server when it receives multiple simultaneous accesses. By default, it simulates 25 users visiting the site in stages for a total of 5 minutes. You can configure most of the parameters simply by logging in.
- WebPageTest: Measures both the response from the server and the web page. It takes into account parameters such as the first byte of information, the load time and the queries to the database. Here you can select the location of the server where you want to test.
- ByteCheck : Focuses on server response time. It measures the time that elapses from when the server receives the request until it begins to run, that is, from when the user tries to access the web until the server starts up.
To measure the loading speed we use these applications
- GTMetrix: It is one of the main tools that measures the performance of a website through PageSpeed Score and YSlow Score, two parameters that measure different aspects of the same. Testing is always done from Canada, so the upload speed is not absolute, but is represented relatively (compared to competitors).
- PingdomTools : This is a great tool for measuring website load times. We have four different servers around the world to choose from. You can choose the one closest to our location. The first test will always give bad results. It is better to try a few and choose the average.
- PageSpeed Insights: Google always says something about websites, and it’s good for users to know that websites are optimized and load fast. It shows speed and optimization. The first data is only shown for websites with a certain number of visits.
* These load speed tests are run first without caching turned on and then repeated with caching turned on to see the difference.
The results obtained with these seven tools may vary depending on the saturation of the moment, the saturation of our servers and other factors that are beyond our control.
Also, some of them allow you to choose where you want to test. We recommend that you do it from the place closest to you. If this is not possible, the absolute charging times should not be considered. However, it can be helpful to compare different providers.
Other aspects to consider
There are other factors to take into account to know if the hosting is of quality.
- Security – Important Points If your website or server is attacked, sensitive information may be stolen or your website may be rendered unusable.
- Reputation: what other customers say about the company is important; Look at reviews on Google, forums and professional blogs to see if there is a repeating pattern (both positive and negative). Pay attention to the publication date and make sure it is current, because things change.
- Ease of use: you are not an expert, so managing your accommodation should be easy. It is best if the provider uses cPanel.
It is a hosting is of quality.
It is a good host if it has enough features, support, and performance. It is also very good if the panel has good security measures, has a good reputation, and can be used by your grandmother.
As you can see, it is not difficult to know if a hosting is of quality. Before reading this article, you already knew if your accommodation is good or not. There are always imponderables, and rarely is there anything that can go wrong.
Use your instincts and this detailed article to decide whether you should stay with your current hosting provider.