How to choose a hosting for a website if you don't even know what it is

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

If you come up with a bright idea of creating your own Internet project, you present its design and even threw in a promotion plan, but for now left the technical part overboard, then these tips will be useful to you.

In your dreams, you already see how your project becomes popular, come up with new ways to monetize, but suddenly you remember that it would be nice to place the site somewhere to start with. The word "hosting" pops up in your head, and you enter it into a search engine, which immediately dumps a bunch of results on you: "reliable hosting", "cheap hosting", "free hosting" … What to choose? Let's understand the basic criteria for choosing a hosting.

Don't chase low prices

You can choose free or very cheap hosting if you want to host a light landing page or just try how it all works.

If you are planning a serious long-term project, immediately discard all the most tempting offers in terms of price. The main problems with free and cheap hosting are: poor server stability, lack of necessary tools, hosting provider advertisements on your website, and inability to blame the hosting provider if something went wrong.

Of course, you do not choose hosting until the end of your days, you can always change it, however, by choosing a worthy candidate in advance, you will save yourself an extra headache.

Explore the website of the hosting provider

Before diving into the hosting specifications, evaluate the service provider. Hereinafter, we will give an example of the Makhost hosting provider, which meets all the requirements that we have identified.

What to look for when choosing a hosting provider:

1. The company must be officially registered.

2. The company must have a license to provide telematic services.

3. It's great if the company has an office. This means that you can at least drop in to them and talk in person if you suddenly have such a desire.

4. Check the domain registration date using the service to make sure that the company did not start a few months ago. Of course, the longer a company has been on the market, the more experience it has in providing services.

5. The support service should work around the clock and seven days a week. Of course, even this mode of operation cannot guarantee that any of your problems will be solved in three seconds, but at least they can reboot the server at any time of the day, and this is already a plus.

This assessment is, of course, superficial, but it will give you some idea of the company to which you plan to carry your money.

Find out the hosting specifications

For the correct choice of the type of hosting or tariff, you need to understand how much disk space and what technical functions are required for your site. If you are faced with the choice of hosting for the first time and there is no technical specialist nearby who could help, it will not be easy.

Be sure to talk to the support team before buying, tell us what your site will be like. They will help you decide on the type of hosting and tariff.

Most likely, you will choose your first tariff and type of hosting intuitively, and after that, having gained experience, you will be able to carefully analyze your needs and choose a more suitable option. There is nothing wrong with this situation. As we said, you can always change your mind depending on the current circumstances. But some characteristics are quite general, and we'll talk about them.

Own equipment in a reliable data center

Own equipment "" is located in the data centers of Moscow and Amsterdam. Data centers are equipped with modern security, fire extinguishing and air conditioning systems. Safety class - Tier III. This means that equipment can only shut down in critical situations, most of which are foreseen and controlled by engineers. When performing technical work, redundant systems are turned on, so that the server continues to work.

Daily backups

As the saying goes, nothing builds confidence in the future like regular backups. So it's a huge plus when a hosting provider guarantees you peace of mind for the safety of your data.

Support for popular CMS

These include, for example, "1C-Bitrix", Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, OpenCart. This option is necessary if you want to quickly deploy, say, a WordPress blog and then not have problems with databases and installing additional scripts.

Makhost even has a special CMS-tariff, which is optimized for reliable and fast operation of engines due to fewer clients on one server and placement on more powerful hardware.

DDoS protection

Do you think that your modest and still small project is not threatened by an attack planned by competitors or criminals trying to steal information? In fact, DDoS attacks are often carried out just for fun and a test of strength. Therefore, you can suddenly become a victim of such a joker.

High uptime

Uptime - the time of continuous operation of the computing system, that is, the time elapsed from the moment of loading to shutdown (reboot, freeze). Uptime is measured as a percentage and actually shows the stability of the hosting. Uptime for "Makhost" - 99, 98%, that is, the server did not work for about 50 minutes a year.

By the way, no honest hosting provider will promise you 100% uptime. There are too many unforeseen factors that create the risk of a server crash; moreover, the equipment must be periodically rebooted.

Access to the site via FTP

This is necessary for editing, deleting and copying folders and files on the server.

Configuring a mailbox on a domain

Business is much more respectable when letters to customers come from a corporate mailbox. At any Makhost tariff, you can create an unlimited number of mailboxes.

Intuitive hosting panel interface

Because only a slow Internet can be worse than a confusing interface.

Free website transfer to hosting

We remind you that you can always change the tariff, type of hosting and hosting provider. If you already use any hosting, but are dissatisfied with its work, you can try Makhost for free for a month. At the same time, Makhost specialists will transfer your site from another hosting for free.

"Makhost" gives readers of Lifehacker three months of free hosting with the "Mak-10" tariff. Promo code - MCLIFE. To activate the free period, top up your balance by 100 rubles. The activation payment is not spent, remaining on the balance, it is just a barrier against abuse by spammers and fraudsters.