Okay, the title might seem a little bit off but yes; online marketing goes hand in hand with website hosting if at all you’re using your own site to market your online business. As a matter of fact, most online marketing service companies also provide web hosting services. And there are more than just a few reasons you need to strategically choose a hosting service for your website.

Needless to mention again, the web hosting service plan you choose will have a huge impact on your online marketing performance. So here are a few pointers you want to know about website hosting, the available types, and how the package you choose affects your online marketing efforts.

What Is Website Hosting?

In order for your website to be visible and accessible over the internet, you will always need a website host or website hosting service. If you’ve been in internet marketing or you’re at least considering getting on board, you might have heard about website hosting companies. These are companies that provide the necessary services, infrastructures, and technologies to allow their client’s website to be accessible via the internet. So after you get a graphic designer and developer to create a website for you, you will need a hosting plan to go live before you can start marketing your business, products, or services online.  And this brings us to the types of hosting services; what are your options?

Types of Website Hosting Packages

There are various types of website hosting packages. In general, the most common plans include the following.

  • Free
  • Shared
  • Dedicated

More often than not, both shared and dedicated website hosting are paid packages, meaning that they require you to pay a monthly fee or at least a one-off payment to join. However, there are also shared website hosting services that are free out there depending on where your website was created over. For instance, if your website is created over WordPress, there’s a free hosting service but you can always upgrade to the paid option, which has a number of perks and fewer limitations. Most experienced website hosting companies such as Hosting Foundry provide all these packages for you to choose the one you prefer.

Free Web Hosting

For this type of web hosting, you don’t need to pay anything to get your website live on the internet. However, there’s always a catch, more often than not. For instance, some hosting services will take advantage of your website to sell ads, which is how they get their revenue. While there’s nothing wrong with this, too many advertisements on one page can sometimes overshadow the main value, purpose, or information of the website.

Shared Web Hosting

This one is also sometimes known as Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting. Shared web hosting means that your website’s data is stored on a shared server. Bandwidth, memory, and speed are also shared. The best thing about shared web hosting is that it is cheaper than dedicated hosting packages. However, the fact that it is shared means that in case of bandwidth congestion, your website can be slower. It is also less secure as compared to dedicated hosting but all the same your site’s data will be secure enough if you seek website hosting from a reputable hosting company.

Additionally, some hosting firms also give you the option of upgrading to a highly-configured VPS hosting, which is a bit pricier than the regular VPS but cheaper than the dedicated option. Shared hosting can be a great option if you’re just getting into online marketing and your site’s ROI is not that high. However, you may want to consider upgrading with time as your site’s user base continues to grow.

Dedicated Web Hosting

A dedicated website hosting service can be the best option if you’re looking to fully monetize your website. Even though dedicated hosting is mostly higher priced, it comes with multiple advantages. For instance, a dedicated server means less congestion, which translates to a website that is faster navigate through.

At high speed, website pages will load faster, which means less inconvenience to your website visitors. You don’t have to worry about high bounce rates due to a website that’s taking too long to load. A dedicated server also gives you more room to use custom applications to improve the look and feel, usability, and reliability of your website to the target users/visitors. Dedicated web hosting is also better when it comes to data security and safety

Cloud Hosting

This type of hosting is mainly used by organizations companies and businesses. It is mostly used by organizations for storage of important files, data, and information online for easy access by individuals within the organization. Some are also designed to allow communication among workers. They are also used to host internal organization systems such as banking systems etc. Cloud hosting can be a great investment for medium to large-sized companies. Most experts view cloud hosting as some sort of dedicated hosting.

Which One Should You Choose?

Even though dedicated web hosting is clearly the best option in terms of security, speed, and reliability, the best website hosting option to choose will depend on a few things. Some of these include the nature of your online marketing, the expected number of users from your target market, your budget, and the expected revenue from your online marketing site. You can also check countrywide website hosting comparisons at Mango Matter Media.

It is also important to carefully consider your available options when it comes to choosing a web hosting provider. Go for a reputable service that is known to provide great customer service and support. Nonetheless, support should also be one of the features to consider before choosing a particular package.