Being in charge of a website requires a lot of responsibility and caution from the very first moments of planning it. It means that web design, maintenance, support, SEO and everything else is on you.
But what some may have never thought about is the choice it was made even before having everything already set. Web hosting has always been an important part of a website and its performance, no matter if the website was built on a, hosted or self-hosted platform.
Based on Mobiteam experience with both hosted and self-hosted websites, we reveal in this article How Web Host May Affect Your Website.
One of the very first things we thought about, is whether the hosting service can affect the way a website is designed? The answer is definitely “yes”. As we mentioned earlier in the article, the web host affects the entire website performance: Speed, Security, SEO, and all other key players and critical elements of a website.
But then, everything depends on different technical aspects and choices, and for this reason, together with our CTO, we reveal these reasons and technical aspects:
Hosted VS Self-Hosted
If you take a decision to build your website on platforms like Wix, Shopify, Squarespace – you may have fewer worries about hosting. These site builders automatically include hosting, and the only thing that remains to do is to focus on the other aspects of the website. But, keep in mind that these website builders are excellent for micro and small businesses.
For average-size businesses and more, you may want a WordPress based website, that provides you a wide control panel access, and gives you power over the backend, domain management, FTP files, .htaccess edits and so on. And as WordPress is a self-hosted platform, it allows you to own your data.
If you always decide to migrate to a different site builder solution, then you will never have to start from scratch, but for hosted platforms – this would be a problem.
Hosting Types
Self-Hosting platforms have a variety of hosting types, that may influence the way website works, and this is why it should be paid more attention to each option presented:
Shared Hosting
This type of hosting places all website data on a server that shares resources (disk space, bandwidth) with other websites also hosted there. The issue with shared hosting is the lack of balance between how websites share resources. Some websites may take more bandwidth, which “discriminates” other websites hosted there. Web hosts, in this case, are restrictive on the amount of web traffic and the number of transactions for security reasons. In other words, it is like a small apartment where 3 people share one bathroom, one table, and one bed. Shared hosting is fit for small blogs and web pages with light traffic.
Cloud Hosting
On the basics, it is almost the same thing as shared hosting: all resources are shared between websites but on multiple servers. So if there is a performance gap on one server another one can pick it up. Cloud Hosting is great for small businesses that search for increasing traffic.
VPS Hosting
If Shared hosting is like a small apartment shared by 3 people, VPS – Virtual Private Server is for having your own piece of the room. This is because you still get a small share of the segment of resources to use, but you know they are all yours. Small-to-Medium Enterprises are using mostly VPS for their web activity and so far – they are all happy with it. At least, most of them.
Dedicated Hosting
The best, but still the most expensive and demanding hosting solution. It allows you to control the entire segment of resources, shared with no other website. Your website is alone, and you are the master of its space. However, the dedicated server is recommended for enterprise-level business and above.
Server Location
The server location has an impact on loading time and website speed in general. Usually hosting providers don’t have servers all over the world, and to be more specific – almost all hosting providers have servers only in some points.
For a local business, that will be expecting traffic from the same region – this would not be a problem. Making sure that the hosting plan comes from a local hosting agency would be enough.
But for global business, server location does matter. Everything starts with a website that is expecting global traffic from different points of the world, that has different internet speed coming from different internet providers. And no matter the size of the website, the server still has to work overtime to gather all data from your website and send it to the other side of the world to the visitor. And this is why it leads to a slower loading time that is not good as well for UX.
But still, there are some things to do in case there are problems with website speed and loading time: converting a blog page to AMP, or the entire website to PWA.
As mentioned, hosting is a very important part and process for your business’s online presence. Choosing one or another hosting plan is up to you, but taking into consideration risks and benefits is a good step in ensuring your good performance. Here at Mobiteam, we design and develop ideas that come up to life and bring revenue for our partners and clients in the digital world. Our proven web design, web development, and business consulting services are confirmed by 65+ satisfied clients all over the world that worked and continue to work with us, and as well recommending Mobiteam to their partners.
