How to Choose the Best Web Hosting Provider The Ultimate Guide

Choosing the best web hosting provider for your website or blog, especially if you are a newbie, maybe a challenging undertaking. There are various web hosting businesses that claim to be the greatest of them all; nevertheless, your choice must be based on your individual needs, such as the type of website, budget, and time constraints.

The most important factors to consider when selecting a web hosting company

1. Web Hosting Provider

When looking for the best hosting, we must consider the size of our plan; at least 2 GB is required in my opinion; many companies offer much more, such as 20, 30, or even 50 GB, but this is not required; however, it will depend on what you will use in the database and the number of email accounts you wish to have.

2. The PHP memory limit, as well as the number of concurrent PHP processes

The PHP memory limit and the number of PHP processes that can execute at the same time are typically not explicitly stated by hosting firms to their customers. As a result, the vast majority of individuals are either unaware or unconcerned about it. Both, however, are required for your PHP program to function properly.

PHP programs have memory requirements. This is due to the fact that PHP software like WordPress, Joomla, Prestashop, and others utilize memory, and the more sophisticated they are, the more memory they use. Furthermore, these apps frequently allow you to install plugins (extensions), which makes your memory use very variable depending on how many of these plugins you have loaded. The more active plugins, the more RAM that is utilized.

Although WordPress.org does not publish official data, a WordPress blog should have at least 256MB of PHP RAM to work effectively.

How many processes do you require in your hosting?

Unfortunately, owing to a variety of factors, including the structure of your traffic, calculating the number of concurrent processes you need to serve is difficult (traffic is not the same for "gusts" as it is for a constant).

The basic idea is that any person that joins a PHP online application to do something starts a PHP process to fulfill their request; for example, five users accessing the program at the same time would potentially start five processes.

If this is your hosting's limit, it means that the web, or the entire server, will be unavailable starting with user no. 6, or this one (that is the most probable).

On the other hand, there are "tricks" for using cache plugins in WordPress that are highly recommended, if not required, and that considerably minimize the processes utilized.

However, it is reasonable to assume that ten processes are insufficient for any WordPress blog that has a minimum margin to accommodate any traffic.

Keep in mind that only receiving a retweet from a well-known Twitter account with thousands of followers is enough to cause the traffic spikes outlined.

3. Response times & availability

The sort of web hosting that I would suggest to 99 percent of my readers, shared hosting, often comes with a 99.9% uptime guarantee. That example, it is expected that throughout a day (1,440 minutes), there would be no more than 1.4 minutes of falls.

In actuality, we must suppose that in a simple hosting service like shared hosting, timely and extremely brief falls (2–3 minutes max once or twice a month) are very usual. You may have to endure a lengthier drop of 10 or 20 minutes once (+/- every 3 months) for server maintenance and other reasons. This would be the realistic limit for me; statistics significantly worse would not be considered acceptable.

A decent response time, on the other hand, should not exceed two seconds; if it does, the percentage of visitors who abandon the site will skyrocket. That is why you cannot arbitrarily raise rates to infinity; in order to do so, the server must be strong, not host an excessive number of clients, and be adequately maintained by technicians, all of which costs the provider money.
If you want to keep a close eye on your server's response times and availability, I recommend using the free Pingdom cloud service to track these metrics. If you notice difficulties, you will receive detailed information and even email notifications.

4. Safety and security

When it comes to web hosting, security is one of the most critical considerations, and especially if you're searching for a low-cost option, you should scrutinize this area with a magnifying glass.

If we entrust all of our work to incompetent hands, we risk major difficulties that jeopardize months, if not years, of hard work. Hackers are always looking for new ways to get access to your server and are quite good at it.

Web hosting businesses do everything they can to keep their servers secure and up to date with protection against new vulnerabilities as they emerge.

5. Online support

It is just a matter of time until you encounter a problem with your web hosting, therefore having reliable assistance is essential. You require a staff that takes your concerns seriously and responds quickly. A hosting company's technical assistance must be dependable, quick, efficient, and well-liked by its consumers.

6. Website Backups

Backups are copies of all of the data that the company providing hosting services creates for their clients. It is without a doubt another extremely significant service because if there is a problem with our website as a result of a cyber-attack or other technical issue, we can always recover the information and restore our website to a recent prior version saved on the servers.

7. Money-back Promise

A truly high-quality hosting service will be distinguished, among other things, by its willingness to refund money to disgruntled consumers.
It is possible that no matter how thoroughly you have considered your decision, you will not be completely satisfied with it. That is why it is usually beneficial to have a trial period during which you may request a refund if you decide that hosting is not for you. Being able to test your web hosting silently is thus critical when employing service of this sort.

Conclusions

Although it may appear that all hosting services are identical at first glance, it is crucial to realize that in terms of support and backups.
The most prudent course of action is to seek out higher-quality hosting. It doesn't hurt to pay a few dollars more every year if you know your work is fully secured and you have a competent staff behind you.

I hope you find this information helpful in determining the best hosting service for your requirements.