Nowadays, every company needs web hosting, since every company needs a website.
However, business owners often choose a provider based on the price alone, without paying much attention to the technical details or the current trends in web hosting.
This is understandable. With so much on their plates already, they often simply don’t have the time to take a closer look at various options.
Unfortunately, we have noticed that some providers are taking advantage of that by misleading less tech-savvy business owners into believing that the service they are paying for is better than it actually is.
Today, we want to discuss five trends in web hosting that are easy to misrepresent.
#1 Security
There’s no doubt that cybersecurity is extremely important for both individuals and companies alike.
In fact, one might argue that it’s more important to the latter since business owners have a duty to protect the privacy of their customers.
After all, if your personal accounts get hacked, it can have disastrous consequences for you, but if your business accounts get hacked, it can have disastrous consequences for your entire customer base.
However, while cybersecurity is of paramount importance, business owners also need to be realistic about it: cyber attacks are an unavoidable reality of having an online presence.
When you are choosing a hosting provider, pay attention to how they talk about security issues. One major trend in web hosting is that if it seems too good to be true, it probably is and might lead to a false sense of security that makes you more vulnerable to cyber crimes.
#2 Site Speed
Site speed is something that is easy to misrepresent because the way we think about time in human interactions is different from how we perceive online.
For example, 10 seconds might seem like an inconsequential amount of time, but if we are talking about site speeds, that’s ages.
Back in 2017, Google did a study on mobile page loading speed, which led to some shocking insights into the relationship between page loading speed and bounce rate. (A bounce is a single-page session on your site and bounce rate is a metric that shows what percentage of site visitors left after viewing a single page). Just two additional seconds in page loading speed increased the probability of a bounce by 32%, while nine additional seconds increased it by 123%.
So, while it might seem like a boring technical detail, this metric is extremely important to any business that has an online presence, especially to companies that sell products and services via the Internet.
When you are choosing a hosting provider, you want to pay close attention to what they say about their site speed.
And remember that when it comes to site speed, every second counts, literally.
#3 Uptime
Uptime is a metric that shows what percentage of time a website hosted by that provider can be expected to stay online based on historical data.
It’s another metric that is easy to misrepresent, because people rarely do the math to understand the implications of a specific uptime percentage.
If hosting provider claims that their uptime is 98%, that seems great until you realize that it means that your website will likely only be available for 357.7 days out of every year.
In other words: it will likely be down for an entire week each year in total!
Meanwhile, if a hosting provider claims that their uptime is 99%, then you can expect your website to be available for 361.35 days out of every year.
Now you are only losing half a week instead of a week.
That one percent difference might not seem significant at first glance, but it can have a huge effect on your bottom line, especially if you are selling products and services online. After all, when your website is down, you can’t make sales, so you are losing money.
When you are choosing a hosting provider, make sure to do the math to better understand what their uptime percentage actually means and how it’s going to affect your business.
#4 Shared Hosting vs. Dedicated Hosting
It’s important to know the difference between shared hosting and dedicated hosting so that you understand the trade-off you are making.
We like to use this analogy:
- Shared hosting is like an apartment block for websites. It’s the most popular as well as the most affordable option. However, the downside is if one website on this “apartment block” experiences a huge spike in traffic, it can affect the performance of your website as well. It can work well for small websites that aren’t yet generating a significant amount of revenue every day.
- Dedicated hosting is like a separate house for a website. It’s more expensive, but you also don’t need to worry about someone else crashing your site. It’s a better option for large websites, especially e-commerce stores that are generating a significant amount of revenue each day.
Note that hosting providers that specialize in the former will emphasize the low price, while the hosting providers that specialize in the latter will emphasize resilience.
What matters is that you evaluate your current situation and choose the option that best meets the needs of your business.
#5 Cloud Hosting
The term “cloud hosting” sounds hip because it evokes the image of your website being somewhere “up in the clouds”.
But it’s important to remember that your data is still stored on someone else’s computers (servers).
The key difference between cloud hosting and other types of hosting is simply that the data is spread across multiple servers instead of just one.
This is something to keep in mind when choosing web hosting. Does cloud hosting make sense or does it just sound cool? It all depends on your business.
Be Aware of These Trends in Web Hosting
As you can see, the problem in the web hosting industry is not so much outright lying to the customer, which is illegal, but misleading the customer by taking advantage of their lack of technical knowledge.
We hope that this article helped you get a better understanding of what are some of the traps that you need to avoid when choosing a hosting provider.
Also, here at Vervology, we aim to be transparent about hosting services we offer, so if you have questions, you can send us a message at any time.