As
every organization aims to establish a website in today’s market, hosting
services have been a hot topic in recent years. Although web hosting services
such as shared server, virtual server and dedicated server ruled the market of
web hosting services for years, Cloud hosting services has secured the driver’s
seat of the hosting services at present. Today, the majority of companies
prefer cloud hosting services because of some convenient and crucial reasons
that supersede web hosting services. For
instance, cloud hosting services minimize the amount spent on hardware and
provide better downtime. Also, the processing speed provided to users is faster
than that of web hosting services.
Although
the list of cloud hosting service benefits is long, it is imperative to choose
the right cloud hosting service provider because the selection of wrong
provider may invite negative outcomes. Hence, you should know certain factors
and consider them effectively to choose the most suitable cloud hosting
provider for your website.
Selection
of a cloud hosting provider kicks off with understanding individual needs. It
is crucial to be aware of what you want from your website and hosting service.
For instance, if you want your cloud server to store a tremendous amount of
data and provide appreciable speed, you should opt for a leading cloud hosting
provider. It is critical to understand your needs because the selection of an
unsuitable service provider may fail to yield positive results which will
ultimately result in loss of money, time and effort. You can make a list of the
factors that you would like to avail in your cloud hosting service. Once you’re
done with it, you can proceed to the next step, i.e. evaluation of services.
Available
in the market today are dozens of cloud providers. But, as all that
glitters is not gold, all the cloud hosting providers are not genuine. It is
important to pick the right provider for your website because you will be
availing its service for a long time. Hence, before appointing a company,
contacting a couple of firms (who satisfy your list of needs) for a free trial
version would be useful. You can evaluate the services of all the providers and
pick the right one. However, there are certain factors that you should take
into consideration while evaluating a cloud hosting provider.
·
Uptime
and Load Balance: The first thing that matters to
website owners is uptime. Every website owner wants his website to be available
over the internet all the time. The uptime holds utmost importance for websites
that are used for online business. An outage of these websites may result in
loss of money, customers and reputation. It may also give your competitors a
golden opportunity to steal your customers who switch on to them because of
your temporary absence. Outage on a holiday can be excessively annoying because
it would affect your business negatively. Therefore, it is very important to
know the uptime promised by the cloud hosting provider. You should check the
approximate interval between outages and notice how they manage to tackle the
same. Some companies guarantee to provide 99.999% uptime in order to gain
attention of clients. You should check whether the company really manages to perform
as guaranteed.
Some cloud hosting providers maintain a load balance of their servers. This means that when one server is down, another server is used to provide backup of uptime. Corporate enterprises that establish a website for online business should check this type of cloud hosting providers.
·
Flexibility
to choose Cloud: There are different kinds of clouds.
Some cloud hosting providers offer multiple choices to clients whereas others
have just one offering. Clouds built on open sources are known as open clouds
whereas those which are built on proprietary models are called proprietary
clouds. Generally, open clouds proves to be better than the proprietary clouds
because vendor lock-in is not present and innovation that a product receives is
more in open clouds. Therefore, you should see to it that the cloud hosting
provider gives you the flexibility to choose the right cloud for your website.
·
Support:
Website owners or maintainers may not have a clear knowledge about everything
related to the cloud. Certain situations may arise when you get struck at a
step and do not have any idea what to do next. For example, you are creating
your own server and you get struck in one step in between the procedure. In
such case, you would like to fall back to the cloud hosting provider. Hence,
you should make sure that the cloud hosting provider you’re choosing will give
you 24 hours a day support.
·
Security:
It is one of the most imperative factors for some business corporations that
prefer cloud hosting service. Companies that store important data in cloud look
for providers who can provide ultimate security so that the data cannot be
accessed or hacked by any third party. Not all cloud service providers offer
this service. Therefore, if high security is one of your needs, look for a
company that promises a complete security solution.
·
Provider’s
Overview: Before appointing a company, you must check
certain things. It includes the reputation of the firm, its experience in the
field and reviews of its past clients. A cloud hosting company that exists in
the market for more than 4 years and has been showing excellence in its service
will have a good reputation, appreciable experience and positive customer
reviews. Therefore, have an in-depth survey of the provider before you decide
the fate of your online business.
·
Price:
Budget always plays a vital role in the selection of a cloud hosting provider.
If your aim is to avail appreciable service, never go with the Cloud computing companies that
attract you by offering the cheapest price. Remember, quality of service
shouldn’t be bargained over the price. You should choose a company that
satisfied all, or at least majority of your needs, and charges a reasonable
price.
Once
you have evaluated every factor effectively, you can make sure which cloud
hosting provider will be most suitable for your business. You can appoint the
firm that satisfies all your needs to get ahead of your competitors’ websites
in near future.
