Website hosting is one of those terms that you will come across often when you are figuring out how to create a website.
So, what is website hosting?
Website hosting is a service that allows people to make their websites available on the internet.
Like a book, a finished book will not be accessible to many people except those who worked on it before it was published.
Your website, even if you have perfected the design, content, and features, will not be able to be visited or discovered by people before you put it on the internet.
This is where web hosting services come in by offering you a place to put your website on the internet.
You can find many website hosts, companies, or services providing website hosting services, on the internet. Of course, this can be an obstacle when you are looking for the right website host for your needs.
To solve that problem, let's find out some of the best web hosting services and what you need to know in order to choose the right website host.
Several Best Web Hosting Companies
On the internet, you will easily find many companies offering web hosting services. This is certainly a good thing for you as a consumer. But, how do you choose the right website host for your business?
Here are some of the best web hosting companies that you can consider for your business:
• Strikingly
Image taken from Strikingly website
Strikingly is the best website host if you want you to need to launch your website fast. Not only that, you can also have a website with an extraordinary look with features that can help you grow your business.
Strikingly is a great website host with a good uptime record. You can be sure that your website will be able to be visited because Strikingly guarantees 99.99% uptime.
Not only that, if you already have a website outside of Strikingly before, you can easily transfer yours to Strikingly. So, you don't have to bother building your website from scratch.
On top of that, you'll also get great customer service from Strikingly. If your website has a problem, you can get help anytime, anywhere by visiting Strikingly 24/7 Live Support.
• Hostinger
Image taken from Hostinger website
Hostinger is one of the most suitable website hosts for beginners. Hostinger offers an intuitive interface that allows anyone to create a website using Hostinger.
Apart from an intuitive interface, Hostinger also offers Live Support, which can help you solve problems on your website 24/7.
Hostinger also has very cheap website hosting plans. You can have a website for as little as $ 2.59 per month.
However, unfortunately, this price seems to have little impact on website performance on Hostinger. Hostinger has a not-so-great uptime record of 99.74% average.
• IONOS (1&1) Hosting
Image taken from IONOS website
IONOS is a web hosting service that offers various benefits at a very cheap price.
You can have a website starting as low as $ 1.00 per month. For that price, you get a free domain and email, free SSL, and access to popular CMSs, such as WordPress and Joomla.
Unfortunately, that price only lasted one year for which you had to pay $ 10.00 per month. You might think that the price is quite reasonable for the features mentioned above.
However, IONOS does not offer Live Chat support, which is important whether you are a layman or have experience creating websites.
Not only that, IONOS will also have a fee if you want to move your website from a single website host to IONOS. Finally, IONOS is still not available in several countries in Europe, China, and Egypt.
How to Host a Website
If you thought that hosting a website is very technical and only IT experts can do it, then you will change your mind after reading this article.
In fact, hosting a website is a relatively easy activity due to current technological advances. You need at least two things to host your website: a domain name and a trusted website hosting service.
Here are the steps for hosting a website:
1. Decide On and Buy a Domain Name
You can think of your website domain name as your home address. When people ask you where you live, you will state your home address.
The same applies to your website. When people ask where your website is located, you will give them the domain name of your website.
The difference is, you cannot determine your home address in the sense that you have no voice to name your address. However, for the website domain name, you determine the name of your website 'home' address yourself.
So, how do you go about choosing a good domain name?
• Create a Great Name
One of the most important things when choosing a name for your domain is brand. So what makes a name great?
For starters, you want to make sure that your domain name is short. This is to make sure that people do not type your domain name wrong. Secondly, you want your domain name to be memorable. A memorable name will become a great asset for your branding effort in the long run.
You can use a name generator to help you find great ideas for your domain name. Some name generators even integrate the branding and SEO requirements for your website name.
• Choose the Right Extension
Image taken from Strikingly website
Extension is something that is attached at the end of your domain’s name. It can sound simple, but having a right domain extension can be helpful for your business.
There are plenty of extensions for your domain name. The most common one is the dot com (.com) extension. You might have also heard of ‘.net’ and ‘.biz’ extensions.
The '.com' extension is the perfect extension if you don't want to experiment with extensions for your website.
However, most website host services generally charge a high price for this extension. Or, worst of all, this extension is already being used by someone else for the same domain name.
• Make Sure Your Domain Name Is Available
If you have a great idea for your domain name, it's possible that other people might have the same idea. It is also possible that someone else is already using the domain name, or at least has patented it.
Make sure you use a name that is not used or patented by someone else to avoid legal matters that can be costly.
2. Choose a Website Host
Now that you have a good domain name, you now need a good website host service.
If the domain name can be seen as your home address, then the website host is the land on which your house or website is built.
The price of land to build your house is generally determined by where the land is located. The more famous or iconic and strategic the location of the land is, the more expensive the land price for your house will be.
But the same is not true of website hosts. The price of a website host is determined by how much space you want to use to build your website and what features you want to get.
In the midst of growing web hosting services, every website host offers its own advantages. This can help or even give you a headache to choose the right website host for your business.
To help you choose, let's take a look at what things you should pay attention to when choosing the right website host for your needs:
• Uptime Guarantee
Uptime is the time when your website can be visited without problems by anyone.
When using a web hosting service, of course, you want your website to always be able to be visited by anyone anywhere and anytime.
This makes uptime one of your top priorities when choosing a website host.
• 24/7 Customer Service
Image taken from Strikingly website
Besides needing your website to be able to be visited anytime, you also need customer service who is ready to help you anytime and anywhere.
This is very important especially for those of you who are still new to website building and maintenance. 24/7 customer service means you can find solutions to problems your website faces quickly and precisely.
• SSL Certificate
Besides providing many benefits for your business and website, you also have to make sure that the website host you choose can guarantee the safety of your website visitors.
This is very important for those of you who plan to open an online store and use the payment feature using a credit card or processing payments online.
• Email Domain
When you choose a name for your website domain, you are also choosing a name for your email domain.
Unfortunately, you don't always get your email domain. But, is the email domain that important?
In terms of branding, having an email domain is a very good thing. You can build a professional impression, and people will trust an email that has an extension of your domain name more than an extension of a regular email service.
If you want to build a professional and trustworthy impression, you have to make sure that you get an email domain from the web hosting service you choose.
From all the criteria above, can you find the right web hosting service? Sometimes there is one website host that meets one or two of the above criteria but doesn't have the others. Well, fortunately, you can find website hosts that meet the above criteria on Strikingly.
Strikingly is a web hosting service that offers a multitude of conveniences. You can connect the domain name that you buy easily with Strikingly. Go to your Site Editor, click Settings, and you will find basic information about your website where you can use the domain that you just bought.
Image taken from Strikingly product
If you already have a domain name outside of Strikingly, you can also move your domain or website to Strikingly very easily.
You will also get a 24/7 Live Chat support service to help you solve your website problems anywhere and anytime. Apart from that, Strikingly also provides free SSL for your website and takes care of it for you.
You can also search for domain names right away and register yours at Strikingly. When registering a domain name, you will also get a domain for your email address.
Apart from great web hosting services, Strikingly also offers website builder services where you can build and design your website with ease.
You can browse a collection of ready-to-use website templates from Strikingly and easily edit the template you choose, for example using the drag and drop builder feature.
Apart from that, Strikingly also offers various features that can help you grow your business. Call it a feature like Live Chat that can help you serve customers who are visiting your website.
You will also get a newsletter feature that you can use to launch marketing strategies, such as Electronic Direct Mail (EDM).
Finally, you can easily optimize your website at Strikingly. You just need to follow the SEO Checklist from Strikingly to ensure that your website will be easier to find through search engines.
From everything you have seen so far, you may find that using Strikingly web hosting service will take a toll on your pocket.
The good news is, you can have a website and get all the benefits above at an affordable price. Strikingly offers a variety of website hosting plans at the lowest price of $ 96 per year.
Image taken from Strikingly website
So what are you waiting for? Build your website now with Strikingly!
