What is the best Web Hosting?
Choosing the right web hosting service for our websites can be complicated since there are many companies with different prices and quality of services.
Disclaimer
Links to third party services in this article are linked to affiliate programs, we still only recommend services knowing that they are really good or excellent.
The commissions we earn help the DocsArchive project where we collect and publish old versions of open source documentation. Thank you for contributing!
What must be considered?
The main characteristics that must be evaluated and taken into account before hiring a web hosting service are:
- Technical support
- Server response speed
- Server uptime
- Security
Technical support
Unless we know from good sources that a company’s customer service is really good, it is always useful to ask a few questions to evaluate their response time and objectivity.
Unfortunately, there are companies that try to save time by responding with predefined and very general content, and I have even encountered companies that lie to get a sale or to escape responsibility for an error or technical problem.
Server response speed
We cannot verify this aspect until after purchasing the service, but there is a lot of information on the Internet (like this article), to find out in advance if the servers respond quickly when a visitor enters the website from their browser.
Server uptime
The uptime defines the availability of the servers, that is, how long it remains active. The ideal would be 100% of the time but considering that we are talking about technology, there are issues such as maintenance, some unexpected fleeting problems, etc.
Maintenance tasks are usually carried out from time to time (for example once every 3 months), in the early morning and only take a few minutes.
So a decent Uptime is usually 99.9% or 99.8%.
Security
Web hosting servers are often targeted by black hat hackers, that is, malicious hackers. For this reason, it is important that the service has a good firewall, an antivirus and protection against DDoS attacks.
It is also our responsibility as users to choose strong passwords, if we set “admin123” as the password there is not much the security system can do to defend the service.
Service features
Characteristics such as the number of databases, subdomains, email accounts, etc., tend to be the same or very similar in all companies, so this is important but on a secondary level, unless we are looking for a particular feature because our website requires it.
Location of servers
The speed of the internet in today’s times makes it increasingly less important to consider the location of the data centers where the servers that host a website are located. Even less important considering that practically all services include CDN or the possibility of adding a CDN very easily, which means that the greatest amount of data reaches the visitor from a nearby location.
For example, from Latin America you can access any North American or European website without noticing any wait for the pages to load. Connectivity between North America and Europe is optimal and extremely fast.
We can conclude then that:
- For the Latin American market the ideal is to hire services with servers in North America since the technology and infrastructure is superior to that found in local providers in each country.
- And for the Spanish market the ideal is to hire a service with servers in Europe since its infrastructure is also excellent, but without any difference that can be perceived when using services with servers in North America.
The best web hosting companies
Hostwinds
Ideal for those seeking excellence at a reasonable price.
One of the companies with the best score on Hostadvice. With headquarters in Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States, and with servers in America and Europe.
- Free migration: Yes
- Servers: North America and Europe
- Hostadvice score: 4.7 out of 5 (1166 reviews)
Hostinger
- Free migration: Yes
- Servers: North America, South America, Europe and Asia (More details)
- Hostadvice score: 4.6 out of 5 (2416 reviews)
Why is Hostadvice score important?
Hostadvice is a web platform where customers give their opinion and rating about the services they have used or are using.
The feedback obtained from the clients themselves is very important since it is the most realistic information we can obtain.
Example of a company we should avoid
To mention a case to avoid, we can analyze the company Donweb.com, very popular in South America for its excellent marketing, but also sadly known among its former clients as a company with a service with many problems and terrible customer service, the which is characterized by generic responses that do not help and only waste the client’s time.
As a result of this situation, Donweb’s score on Hostadvice is 1.6 out of 5. Even so, this company leads the local market based on pure marketing.
There are many cases like this and the purpose of this content is to prevent you from wasting your time, patience and money on this type of unpleasant experiences.