Website hosting is the first service you purchase when you intend to put up a website online. And while it used to be the case that hosting provider only supply the technical infrustructure for your website, currently the common user and customer for hosting companies has changed, with the increasing number of CMS websites, and a lot of DIY platforms and tools, hosting providers now have to deal with different types of issues, most not involving tech, but do involve: Customer service, ease of use, custom panels and a lot of UX\UI upgrades, to make the work of the users easy and perhaps even fun.
Most people tend to stick to a hosting company for years and decades
A hosting provider is something so “behind the curtains” and the payments are usually not so high, so most people don’t even consider moving. If their website has issues with modern scripts and plugins, they will tend to think it’s the fault of the website. While in reality, some hosting providers hadn’t upgrades their hardware and software in decades, leaving their clients in a disadvantage – taking their ability to use modern upgrades for their websites, and having a slow websites because of the low resources hosting providers tend to allocate for shared and cheap hosting plans.
Questions to ask about your current hosting provider
- Is the Control Panel user friendly?
If not, perhaps your workflow will be more pleasant, fast and easy with another hosting provider. Most modern hosting providers create their unique Control Panel and compete which is best. - Is the technology up to date? (For example, is it Cloud Hosting?)
The technology of the server your website is on can influence everything that has to do with speed and security. Having your websites hosted on a Cloud will usually deliver better results in speed and security. - Do you get customer service when you need it?
Most people create a website and don’t talk to their hosting provider in ages, and if an issue arrises, most webmasters will try to fix the issue themselves. With the uprising of less technical web creators, there is a need for a good customer service from your hosting provider. This is one of the first things you’ll want to test when considering a new hosting provider for your sites.
How to choose your next hosting provider
Ok So you decided it’s time to break lose from your hosting provider and upgrade to a new one, there are things to consider when choosing your websites new hosting, some of the questions are the same as for your current hosting provider in the section above, such as:
- Is the Control Panel modern and user friendly?
- Is the technology suited for your website? Check out minimal server requirement if you’re using a CMS. For modern websites a good amount of RAM and CPU is needed for a website to run smoothly.
- Is there a daily backup of your website and an option to restore? are the backups devided to websites or for the whole hosting package? You’ll want the first option – Daily backup of every single website so you can restore it when needed without affecting other websites on your servers\hosting package.
- Price: while you will be lured by cheap hosting providers to pay a couple of bucks a month, and you might think it’s great but the reality is a bit different, the most inexpensive hosting services will make you struggle with your website, or the resources will be so low that a couple users on your website will make it really slow. On the other hand, you might find some of the top hosting providers a bit on the expensive side, and if you don’t need a fancy hosting company for your website, you’ll find that there are stable, good and modern hosting companies that don’t cost as much as they used to due to technology advances in the field of cloud computing.
How to move your site to a different hosting provider
It depends on how the website was built, if it’s a CMS open source like WordPress, you’ll be able to move the website to a different hosting provider with ease, using one the many plugins for this sole purpose. You can also check if your new hosting provider supplies a free service for transferring websites, most companies do, for new customers.
If your website is built on a technology that cannot be copied as is to a new hosting provider, for example if your website was built with a Website DIY builder such as Godaddy has, you’ll want to “reproduce” the website in the new technology you want it to be created on. Most people find WordPress to be sufficient for their overall needs, unlike other platforms.
How to move a website that is not WordPress to WordPress
There isn’t an easy way, and the safest way to move a website that was not built with WordPress, to WordPress, is just taking a reference of the old website and building the new one with a modern Drag and Drop plugin such as Elementor Pro – that will assist in making the website responsive as well.
How to move a WordPress website between Hosting comapnies easilty
There are a few plugins that can help us with the transfer. One of the best is All In One Migration, which allows you to save a copy or your website and upload it to the new hosting, taking over all the files and making the websites the same as the backup, which the option to change the URL of the website while backing up so the new website that you upload the backup to will have the new address instead of using Search and replace afterwads (Although it’s still highly recommended to do a search and replace after moving a website from a different address)
Forceful upgrades from your current hosting plan
If your hosting provider keep raising the prices on your plan, while you don’t see a reason for it, it’s because of the strategy a lot of hosting comapnies use, some tend to give a really nice starting price, while allocating too little resources, so that the site owner will have to upgrade when the website becomes live and has visitors. If you plan to have a lot of visitors to your website and you want a good user experience for them, research and buy a good hosting plan from a decent provider and don’t go for the 2bucks cheap plans some of the comapanies provide.