Main Features
Storage space/ Disk space
An important feature when choosing a hosting plan is the total amount of data you get. How much space you require for web hosting will be determined by the amount of content (text, images and other files) on your website, the type of content (video versus text) and how quickly you need your pages to load.
Basic hosting plans might offer around 100 GB storage (domain.com).
Bandwidth
According to WPBeginner, “bandwidth in website hosting is the amount of data your website can transfer to your users in a given amount of time”. This is important as it affects your page loading time during peak times. Higher bandwidth also allows you to add more features and content to your website without slowing your website down.
Multiple hosting options
There are a number of options available for hosting – these are shared, dedicated, cloud, VPS, colocation and WordPress.
The most popular options are shared hosting for new and small websites, and dedicated hosting for high-traffic sites.
The difference between the two hosting types is the type of server on which your website is stored. With shared hosting, your website shares a web server with other websites. This can present challenges such as increased security risks if other websites using the same server get compromised and diminished performance. Shared hosting, however, is more cost effective, especially for smaller websites.
With dedicated hosting plans, your website does not share a web server with other sites. The major advantage of dedicated hosting is you get administrative access, have lower security risks and greater performance as you are not sharing any resources with other websites. Dedicated hosting plans are typically more expensive.
Uptime
When a website goes offline, it is experiencing downtime. All businesses will want to minimise their website’s downtime as it impacts credibility, Google rankings and even sales if you have an e-commerce site. Strong uptime can be an indicator that your hosting provider has servers that perform well. Typically, a reliable hosting provider can guarantee an uptime of 99%.
Web files Backup and Transfer capabilities
Similar to all important company documents, your website needs to be backed up regularly. This is to prevent loss of data if your website gets hacked.
If you have your files backed up, in the case of a security breach or loss of data you can restore your website’s most recent backup and run your website as usual.
In the case you are unhappy with your current hosting services, transfer capabilities enable you to move your website to a different web hosting provider. There are hosting providers that offer free site migration if you move your website to their servers.
Email Hosting Services
A professional business email is important to establish credibility. If you want to move away from your Gmail or Yahoo email address and want to get a custom email address you need Email Hosting.
While email hosting is usually included in your web hosting package, email hosting is a separate service.