Before choosing a web hosting company in Nigeria, there are several important factors you should consider. A good web hosting company will influence the growth of your site by ensuring it is safe, fast and SEO friendly. You should at all times check the reviews of each web hosting company you are aiming to join, Facebook and Google are the best sources for review information. Each web hosting company has an active Facebook page where you can read the comments of followers and make informed decisions.
These factors will help you to know whether a particular web hosting company is good or bad:
- Refund policy
Refund policy is important. A company without a clear refund policy will make your life difficult after joining them. Most companies have 30-day money back guarantee policy where new clients are able to request for a refund if they discover that the company is not providing quality services.30 days are enough to determine the quality of a company’s services.
Before you join any hosting company, first learn whether they have money back guarantee and on what condition. Good hosting companies have up to 60-days money back guarantee policy.
- Cost
One of the reasons why you should join a particular company is the costs. Always compare the costs among several hosting companies alongside specified features. You should not spend more than half of your income on hosting unless it’s a new website that’s yet to monetize. You should choose a cheap web hosting company like Bluehost which charges as little as $2.65 per month.
An ideal web hosting company should set its price in such a way that no client pays more than they earn; if possible, the hosting price should be 1/4 of the amount earned.
- Customer Services
Never join a hosting company that does not have 24/7 customer support. Every website should be live for 24 hours daily. Your hosting company should have staff which are available 24/7 to provide any support required. To know whether a company’s customer support is efficient, read followers’ comments on their Facebook page, then start a live chat on their websites.
For the past 6 years, I have been hosting with Kinsta,I find them to be the best in regards to Customer Support.Kinsta is a Managed WordPress Hosting company that’s ideal for viral websites(follow this link to see the company’s hosting services)
- Bandwidth, traffic and Memory Capacity
Among the most important features of a site are, Bandwidth, traffic and memory capacity. You should compare these features in various hosting companies to see which one provides the most at a cheaper price. Normally, hosting companies charge extra fee for extra resources consumed. Ensure that whatever plan you buy contains more features than your site utilizes.
Some hosting companies suspend a website when it exceeds the allocated resources, which is not a good thing for clients. Make sure that you pick a company that upscale resources whenever your site experience traffic spikes.
Types of hosting
Every hosting company should have at least 4 types of hosting. The major ones are:
- Shared Hosting
- VPS Hosting
- Cloud Hosting
- Reseller Hosting
- Managed WordPress Hosting
- Dedicated Server
In case you buy shared hosting services, you’ll be able to upgrade to VPS or Dedicated Server within the company when your site becomes viral. It’s not advisable to keep hoping from one hosting company to the other because your site may lose some SEO scores.
It’s only a company with fully managed WordPress Hosting that will not have separate types of hosting because the resources are allocated based on the plan you buy. In case a company does not indicate whether it’s Cloud Hosting or Managed WordPress Hosting, it should have more than 4 types of hosting. If you check Bluehost,you’ll notice that it has 6 types of hosting, including WooCommerce.
- SSL Certificate/Malware Removal
A website’s security is very important. Never join any web hosting company that does not provide free SSL certificate or offer malware/virus removal.
In case your website is attacked (almost every website is attacked by hackers at one time), you hosting company should be ready to thwart the attacks or remove the malwares or viruses injected into the site.
The first thing you should check is the SSL certificate, it should be free.
- Free migration
Some companies offer free migration of a site others require that you look for an expert to do the work.Kinsta is one of the best web hosting company to join if you need free migration services, free SSL certificate and high speed in terms of loading.
For a new website, you don’t have to know about migration but for websites you want to migrate from another company, migration policy is important. Some hosting companies charge up to $300 to migrate a website to their servers.
- Hidden charges
You should also investigate about hidden charges. Some firms will indicate $100 as the cost of hosting but when you migrate to them, they increase the price to $200 by indicating that the original price was for promotion purposes. It’s important that you seek information from some of the company’s clients.
- Types of clients hosted by the company
If there is not major client being hosted by the company, don’t dare join them…unless it’s a new hosting company. Big clients prefer stable hosting companies; they gather a lot of information regarding various web hosting companies before they settle on one. You should go through the list of clients and if you find major clients especially in your industry among the company’s customers, then that’s a good hosting company.