All about buying web hosting for your author website

Just like buying a domain name for your author website, buying web hosting is just as important too.

Heck, I would say that it’s more important than buying the domain name itself.

If for some reason you don’t like your current domain registrar, you can always unlock your domain name and transfer it to another domain registrar.

But if you hate your web hosting service, it’ll be very difficult for you to move to a different web hosting service.

If your website is brand new and you have yet to do anything, you probably won’t mind canceling your hosting plan and starts fresh.

But if you already have a website, this is going to be a hassle since it’s not easy to move your website from one web hosting service to another.

Because of that, buying web hosting for your author website isn’t something that you should do at a spur moment.

You need to think carefully before you sign up with any hosting plan.

What to look for when it comes to buying web hosting for your author website

What you should look for in a web hosting service will depend on the type of hosting plan you intend to purchase. But in general, this is what you should look for before you commit yourself to any hosting plan.

The reputation of the web hosting service

Just like your domain registrar, it’s also important to know the reputation of the web hosting itself. The last thing you want is to sign up with a web hosting service that is unreliable, especially during the crucial moment when your website traffic is at its peak.

It’s not that hard to find out how good the web hosting service is. There are plenty of websites out there that provide ratings for any web hosting service you can think of.

Another way to find out about the hosting companies’ reputation is to hear recommendations from other people.

For me, that’s the best way to know how good is the web hosting service since these people already experience the web hosting service firsthand.

The server uptime

You want to be sure that your web hosting server uptime has almost 100% uptime. The last thing you want is your readers are complaining on their social media account that they can’t access your author website.

Many reputable web hosting services will guarantee that their server will have almost 100% uptime.

If you already did a good job in vetting out the available web hosting services, you don’t have to worry so much about this part.

What type of customer support the web hosting service is providing

Things can go awry from time-to-time. And it can happen when we least expect.

In this situation, you want the problem to be solved as quickly as possible. And when it comes to solving the problem fast and in the efficient manner, you want to have a quick access to the customer support.

Many reputable web hosting services will offer a wide variety of customer supports such as toll-free line, live chat, email and knowledge base.

Of course, having these things in place doesn’t guarantee how responsive their customer support is. Your best bet is to get the feedback from the people who did use the web hosting service. Reviews and ratings are also helpful too.

It has cPanel

cPanel makes it easy for you to manage your server. Unless you’re an expert, managing your own server can be a complicated ordeal for many of us.

Having a graphical interface to manage the server will make things easier for those who have no technical background.

Many reputable web hosting services tend to have cPanel for managing your server.

If you have no technical background in managing server, just be sure that any web hosting service you intend to use has this.

It has WordPress one-click installation

This is big for those who want to create an author website using WordPress. Having WordPress one-click installation will make it easy for you to install WordPress on your server.

Many web hosting services that allow you to install WordPress on their server have one-click installation for WordPress. So, it shouldn’t be a problem for you to find the web hosting service that has this.

Which web hosting services you should get for your author website

Now that you already know what to look for when it comes to buying web hosting for your author website, which web hosting services that have all these things?

I would say that there are plenty of them. But these are some of the amazing web hosting services that many people use to host their website. What’s more they have a good reputation among the web development community too.

Note: the comparison that I made between these web hosting services is based on their shared plan, which is the entry-level of the web hosting service.

Setrahost

Setra what?

That seems to be the reaction I get whenever I tell people that I use Setrahost for my website.

Yes, Setrahost may not be as mainstream popular as any other web hosting services, such as Hostgator and Bluehost.

But don’t sleep on Setrahost just yet, when you find out that they offer blazing speed upload time and faster performance for your website, malware and enterprise-level DDOS protections, free SSL certificates at the same price point as Hostgator and Bluehost.

Even better?

They even offer a free migration if you’re thinking about moving away from your current web hosting service.

If you’re looking for an affordable hosting plan, Setrahost is a good place to start.       

SiteGround

Unlike Setrahost, where your plan limits how many websites you can host, SiteGround offers unlimited websites for its shared hosting plan. That is, if you’re referring to their GrowBig plan.

Pretty much the rest of their specs aren’t that much different from Setrahost.

The only difference is that SiteGround only offers an annual plan for its web hosting service. If you prefer to pay monthly, then Setrahost is the way to go. 

 Which hosting plan should you get?

Shared hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated server. There are so many varieties when it comes to hosting plans. But then again, which one should you pick?

If you’re just getting started, the shared hosting plan is already good enough for you since it’s perfect for the new website that doesn’t have a lot of traffic. What’s more, you can also manage the server by yourself without having to hire people. It’s for this reason that the shared hosting plan is perfect for those who don’t have a technical background in managing servers.

You will only need to consider upgrading to a different hosting plan once you have outgrown your existing hosting plan.

Web hosting services usually will notify you when you have outgrown your existing plan.

Until that time comes, the shared hosting plan already has all the things you need to get started. You don’t have to go crazy by opting for VPS hosting and a dedicated server.

As for which shared hosting plan you should get, that will depend on what you need. For me, it doesn’t hurt to opt for the plan that allows you to host many websites. You’ll never know that you may need to create many different websites down the road.

Well, for me at least.

But it says unlimited this and that

You probably think that you don’t have to upgrade your hosting plan because of all the unlimited things that the shared hosting plan has to offer.

But here’s where most people get it wrong when it comes to the term unlimited.

When the web hosting services say that they’re offering unlimited websites hosted, bandwidth, and storage space, it only means that they don’t limit how many websites you want to host, the bandwidth, or the storage space you use for your websites.

HostGator has a thorough explanation of this issue on its website. So, I highly recommend that you take a look at it to deepen your understanding of this issue.

While the information provided is based on HostGator’s hosting capabilities, it doesn’t hurt for you to use it as a benchmark for other web hosting services you plan to buy. That can help you with giving a rough idea of the amount of traffic that your hosting plan can handle for your website.

Web hosting plan specifically for WordPress

If you’re using WordPress and you have outgrown your existing hosting plan, consider upgrading your plan to managed WordPress hosting.

The reason for that is that it’s a hosting plan that is optimized specifically for WordPress.

With managed WordPress hosting, your website will load faster thanks to its low-density servers, Content Delivery Network (CDN), and multiple caching layers. Not only that, but it will also protect against WordPress-specific attacks and provide a daily backup for your WordPress sites, too.

While Setrahost and SiteGround do offer WordPress hosting, they’re only a slight upgrade to their shared hosting plan.

If you want a hosting that can handle hundreds of thousands to millions of traffic in a month, this is the one you should get instead.

WP Engine

WP Engine is the ultimate WordPress hosting for a reason.

For one, it offers all the advanced tools for design, site management, security solutions, and content insights, to name a few, for your ultimate WordPress experience.

And if your website traffic is in the millions?

Well, you can bet that WP Engine can handle this much traffic for you.

As you can already tell, WP Engine is certainly geared for the website that has a huge amount of traffic per month.

And not to mention, it doesn’t come cheap, even for their basic plan.

The good news is you have the option to pay monthly. But you tend to save a lot more if you opt for the annual billing.

Have your domain name ready

It doesn’t matter which hosting plan you pick and which web hosting service you plan to use; pick the option I already have a domain name during the signup process.

By choosing that option, the domain name will be available for you to complete the setup process through your cPanel. Choosing that option will also prevent you from having to purchase another domain name from your web hosting service, too.

If you have other domain names that you purchase, you can always add them later through cPanel.

The ‘TL;DR’ (Too Long; Didn’t Read) Section

Your quick answers to all your web hosting woes, even the technical ones. They all sum up in an easy-to-view toggle format.