Things to consider before choosing the best web hosting company in Kenya
Before you finally settle on the best web hosting company in Kenya, there are several things you should consider. While one of them is cost, there are crucial factors that are even more important and paramount.
In Kenya, not many web hosting companies are reliable, most of them are on reseller plans where they don’t have full control of the servers. Before you select one, ensure you go online and check for reviews of that particular hosting company.
But before anything, here are factors to consider before choosing the best web hosting company in Kenya:
- Customer Service
Customer Service is a key factor when determining which web hosting company to choose. Some hosting companies have 24/7 customer service while others open between 8 am to 5 pm. In addition, there are companies which act promptly when contacted by their clients. Since most websites must be live 24/7, customer service of any web hosting company must not be closed at any given time. Please check opening and closing time of a particular hosting company you are aiming to join.
To know that a certain hosting company has the best customer service, visit their Facebook page, Twitter or online to check the comments of their customers—nowadays nearly all companies have social media pages. If you find that most people are complaining about their services without any action, then that’s not an ideal company for you.
- Ability to add domains
Most bloggers I interact with own more than one domain. Any good web hosting company should allow customers to add domains to a given number. While you make your first call, ensure you ask about the number of domains that can be hosted by the package they offer. If the company does not allow you to add more domains, then that’s not a good hosting firm.
- Set up and renewal costs
I own 6 domains and sometimes when I find that a particular hosting company is not favourible, I migrate to a better one. During set up and migration, there are hidden costs which are associated with the process. The best thing to do is ask about the set up and renewal costs before you commit yourself.
I remember one company which I joined in 2015 at a cost of Ksh 2,100 per year. After one year, the package expired and I was billed Ksh 8,400. I was informed that when I joined, the company had an offer which expired. I had to move to a more reliable web hosting company.
- Extension of Payment period after your package expires
Most web hosting companies extend payment period when your package expires. For instance, if it expires today, the company will extend for one week to allow you purchase another package. But there are other companies which suspend your account immediately your subscription expires.
When making an inquiry, ask them what they will do if your account expires and you don’t have money to renew immediately. Good hosting company will extend by 7 to 14 days.
- Government interference
I know of a certain web hosting company which witnessed against us when we wrote an article that didn’t augur well with the government. There is also another company that deleted a domain of a certain blogger who the government was targeting.
It’s disheartening when you wake up to realize that government had ordered for deletion of your domain name without notice.
- Account limitations
At one time, I had an issue with a local web hosting company which suspended my site 10 times. There were frequent traffic spikes, instead of the company scaling their resources, they suspended my account, I ended up losing money and traffic. This is one issue that troubled me until I decided to join Kinsta, which is now the best according to me and many top bloggers.
- Site back ups
Any web hosting company must have the ability to back up your site content. Some of them back up daily, others weekly, others hourly while the rest do it monthly. Since any site can be affected by malware, it’s important for the web hosting company to have site backups.
Assuming your site is infected by malware and you lose the content, your hosting company will be able to provide the backed up content.
- Server reliability and uptime
In 2015 I was hosting my original blog at one of the hosting companies in Kenya. Every morning as I woke up, I had to check whether the site was up but the most disappointing thing is that whenever I checked, I could occasionally find it offline and when I contacted customer care, they told me that my site had exhausted its resources. Another major issue was the uptime which was not more than 90%. A good web hosting service must have uptime in excess of 99.9%.
- Additional services
There are additional services which are not mentioned on the site, like web design, migration of content for free and email services. These are important value added services that any blogger needs.
After checking all the factors above, you can now go ahead and make your payment.
