How to Choose the Best Web Hosting in Canada
If you’re starting a new business or personal website (and have been keeping up with my blog posts), then you might be starting to realize there is a lot more to building a website than having a computer and some basic computer skills. There are a lot of hidden things you will not even think about until you cross that path.
One of the things you have to add to your “to-do list” is find a proper web hosting for the website. If you think like me, the first thing you will do is input “web hosting in Canada” into your favourite search engine to see what comes up. Already you will hit a snag a realize this is more complicated than you thought.
Reviews, reviews, reviews! This is what you’re going to find in Google. Normally reviews are a good thing for you to look at when you are scoping out a product. A red flag for me is when the sites ranking for web hosting are mostly review sites. This immediately tells my brain that this is a competitive market and most are going to promise something a little bit more than the last, but the cost is a little more too. Before you know it you could be spending an arm and a leg for options you don’t need. Our advice? Find out what you need before looking at the reviews.
- Is it shared hosting you’re looking for? If you’re just starting up this is extremely cost effective. The only downside is that its well, shared. Although hosting services may say this is “unlimited” in terms of usage, nothing is restricted. So as you grow as a website, you might need an upgrade!
- Managed Hosting vs Non-managed: Managed hosting simply put means that everything is taken care of for you. This can be more costly however. Non-managed means you will need to keep an eye on the website yourself. Make sure it’s up and running, etc. This isn’t a huge problem for most small business because you will likely be on your website quite frequently.
- Customer service: Is there a live person you can contact at any time with questions or concerns?
- What is the company’s up-time percentage? Pay attention to this and make sure it’s realistic. 100% is not realistic!
- Which security tools does the company use? Security is our top-priority when hosting your website. With the ever present threat of hacking and malware breaches, we have multiple redundancies in place to protect your website.
One thing we really want you to take note of when you are shopping for web hosting. Deals. You are going to see them on every listing. This industry us very good at advertising and keeping an eye on the competitors. Just make sure you read the small print on all the “deals” before signing your new website away to a hosting company!