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Website Hosting
Having your own website will help you built a platform for affiliate marketing Pexels

When it’s time to find a home for your small business’ website, there are a lot of great web hosting companies out there to choose from. With all these options, it's easy to get overwhelmed with the choices and struggle with determining the best service. By using this checklist, you can make sure that the hosting service you choose can satisfy your needs.

While the primary items on our checklist seem basic, it's the small details that count, especially in today's saturated markets. Let's hop into it, shall we?

1. Speed

Speed
Sites that load fast get better conversion rates. Pixabay

Page loading speed is one of the most important metrics both in Google's metrics and in overall user experience. Loading speeds greatly affect user conversions because they, too, expect speed. In fact, 49% of users expect a page to load in under 2.4 seconds. Also, according to an AI-driven projection by myPulse mobile:

  • Pages that loaded in 2.4 seconds had a 1.9% conversion rate
  • At 3.3 seconds, the conversion rate was 1.5%
  • At 4.2 seconds, the conversion rate was less than 1%
  • At 5.7+ seconds, the conversion rate was 0.6%

That's why hosting providers like Rocket give you blazing fast speeds on all your WordPress hosting needs with an advanced dashboard, so you can glance at your relevant site metrics all in one convenient widget. They're even running a special discounted price on their Pro Hosting Plan, which is one of their most popular hosting plans.

2. Secure Locations
Location
Dedicated servers in the country of operations reduce page load times. onrocket.com

Web hosts that have servers within the country they operate in will likely be faster. That's why it makes sense for you to look for web hosting providers that have at least one server in your country of choice. Lucky for you, both CoolHandle and Rocket have dedicated servers in the U.S. so you don't have to worry about your users having to deal with slow load times.

3. Security

Secure Web Hosting
Make your sites more secure with a plan from CoolHandle. coolhandle.com

Hackers and identity thieves are becoming smarter and smarter. That's why websites need to do the same with their security. GoDaddy's recent data breach, which exposed over 28,000 web hosting accounts, has brought some concerning issues to light. In the following months, almost all major web hosting providers beefed up their security by installing extra measures.

CoolHandle is one such provider that offers 24/7 hacker and virus protection so that your data stays safe. They also offer WordPress hosting plans at astonishingly low prices.

4. Support

Customer Support
Customer support | Representational Image. Pexels / Andrea Piacquadio

Nothing's worse than talking to a repetitive bot that leads you on with repetitive questions, only for it to spit out generic, unhelpful answers. 24/7 customer support where you actually talk to another human being is a hallmark of a great hosting provider.

5. Scalability

Scalable Hosting Plans
Choose the hosting plan that's capable of growing with you. onrocket.com

Take a look at your current website traffic and content. Do you expect using significantly more resources over time as a result of higher visitor traffic? Or additional content like photo or video galleries? If so, it’s better to find a web hosting provider that can accommodate that expansion rather than one you’ll soon outgrow.

These web hosting providers offer plans that can simultaneously have 25 fully-functioning domains that can handle 500,000 visitors so you'll never run out of space for your user traffic.

6. Price

Savings
These web hosting services are priced very competitively. Pixabay

Alright. Let's get down to brass tacks. The number one concern you probably have when choosing a hosting provider is its price. Luckily for you, all of the services that we've provided in this article are all priced very competitively. Sites like Rocket.com are even having a sitewide price drop on all of their web hosting and WooCommerce plans. What are you waiting for? There's no better time to start your very own website!