A web host is a service that lets you get your website onto the internet.
Many organizations and individuals make the mistake of carelessly choosing a web host without considering how the hosting impacts their website’s performance.
Your website’s page load speed, for example, is one major factor that is affected by the web host. Slower loading speeds lead to higher bounce rates and lower conversion rates.
To learn more about the benefits of high-speed web hosting and how hosting impacts your website, keep reading.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
How Web Hosting Impacts Website Performance
The Benefits of Web Hosting
How To Choose the Right Web Host
Final Thoughts: Web Hosting Impact on Website Performance
How Web Hosting Impacts Website Performance
Your web host affects six crucial aspects of website performance:
1. Speed
Speed and performance go hand-in-hand. Page load speed is a significant determining factor when it comes to user experience.
Most users will not wait around for a website that is taking too long to load, especially when they can pick from plenty of other competing websites with faster loading times.
According to Baclinko, the average webpage load time is 10.4 seconds on a desktop and 27.4 seconds on mobile.
Anything longer than this and your bounce rates are bound to increase.
Your web hosting speed is affected by:
- Type of hard drive: Web hosts can have Solid State Drives (SSDs) or Hard Disk Drives (HDDs).
- RAM: Random Access Memory (RAM) is the amount of storage your web host provides to store your scripts.
- Bandwidth: Determines how much data your web host can transfer.
When you’re picking a web host, you must look at these factors before purchasing. That way, you’ll prevent web hosting speed from driving customers away.
Google PageSpeed Insights is a great free tool for checking your website load time statistics speed and other website performance metrics. Here’s how the Bluehost blog scores:
2. Security
Your web hosting impacts your website’s security. A low-level web hosting provider might not have stringent measures in place to prevent hackers/ cybercriminals from accessing your website and, potentially, sensitive business information.
A web host like Bluehost, for example, has top-notch built-in security features, such as a free SSL certificate and secure shell (SSH) Access, which can help keep your website safe from malware, phishing attacks and cybercriminals.
3. Uptime
Uptime refers to the time a website is available for users in a given period. It’s usually measured in percentages. Again, your web hosting provider plays a crucial role here.
If your web host’s servers are down, your website cannot function. That is called downtime.
Most web hosts experience downtime. The key is to pick a host that has multiple power backup options and a high uptime percentage. You can read reviews of web hosts to see if they’re reliable.
4. SEO
You may not think your web host affects search engine optimization (SEO), but it does. SEO involves optimizing your website, including the backend, such that it ranks higher in search engine result pages (SERPs).
Your choice of web hosting impacts the page load speed of a website. That directly influences your SEO efforts. A poorly crafted website with unnecessary scripts and bloated code makes it harder for search engine crawlers to flow through your website.
Your SEO and digital marketing efforts will go in vain if your web hosting service cannot provide reliable backend support to keep your website running smoothly.
You can read Search Engine Journal’s guide on SEO-friendly web hosting to learn more.
5. Customer Support
Any issues that could hinder your website’s functionalities must be sorted out as quickly as possible. When your website or webpage is not functional, you miss important lead generation and conversion opportunities.
Ideally, your web host must offer 24/7 customer support and have experienced professionals on hand to resolve any issues immediately.
6. Scalability
Carelessly choosing a web host impacts your website’s scalability. When your business booms, your website should evolve with it. A good web host makes it easy for your website to grow with you.
A poor web host makes it harder to scale. So, despite your business growing, you’ll be stuck with the same website you were using in the beginning.
The Benefits of Web Hosting
If you’re building a website, you need a web host. For a basic website, you could self-host or choose a website builder that offers limited hosting capabilities.
However, if you truly value your website, it’s time to get a dedicated hosting service.
Here’s why:
1. Access to Technical Support
With the right web host, website owners get access to instant technical support. Whether you’re having an issue with web hosting speed or wondering why your website’s performance is not up to par, you have an experienced customer support team at your disposal.
That is especially beneficial for website owners with no technical background.
For example, if you’re using Bluehost as your web host and face any issue, you can contact our customer service immediately via chat, call 24/7 or head over to our knowledge base.
2. Improved Security
Top web hosting services guarantee high-level security for all their users. You don’t have to worry about data breaches or cyber-attacks because the web host has built-in security features to keep you safe.
With Bluehost, you get three layers of spam protection, your directories are password-protected, you can use two-factor authentication, set user permissions, and that’s just the start of our comprehensive security measures.
Your web host should also ideally have top-notch features to protect their physical data centers as well.
Many hosts also regularly backup your website so that you can restore it in case anything goes wrong.
3. High Uptime
A significant benefit of web hosting is that hosts guarantee high uptime rates. They don’t just mention uptime rates of 99.9% to get you to sign up. There is usually also a clause in the contract guaranteeing “X”% uptime.
Most web hosts claim an uptime of 99.9%. As we mentioned earlier, uptime is a crucial factor that affects website performance.
Increased reliability means you never have to worry about your website being down. As a result, you won’t lose out on leads or customers.
You can check out Uptrends’ detailed guide on calculating uptime to find out more about the subject.
4. Domain-Specific Email Address
If you’re starting a professional website, you want your email address to reflect that. You don’t want a Gmail address when you’re talking to potential customers or clients.
Web hosting services often offer free email addresses that are domain-specific. So, if your website’s name is “abc.com,” then your email address will also be “[email protected].”
Typically, you get a fixed number of domain-specific addresses depending on your pricing plan.
5. Routine Maintenance
Another major benefit of web hosting is that the host performs backend maintenance.
There’s no need for you to install and maintain servers in-house, so you save the time and money your organization would’ve spent on server installation, maintenance, and IT professionals.
Your hosting provider will take care of updates, backups, and any other necessary patches.
How To Choose the Right Web Host
Once you’ve decided to use a web hosting service, it’s time to pick the right one. There are hundreds of web hosts on the market today.
Here are three critical features to help you find the perfect one:
High Speed
In the previous section, we mentioned that web hosting speed is dependent on three factors — Hard drive, RAM and bandwidth.
For a positive web host impact on your website, the provider should:
- Use SSDs over HDDs: SSDs are faster and more reliable than a standard hard drive.
- Provide adequate RAM: If you’re creating a lightweight basic website, around 2GB of RAM is enough, but most dynamic websites require more RAM.
- Allocate bandwidth: The higher the bandwidth, the faster your website functions.
If your website is a creative and dynamic one, we recommend using a dedicated hosting plan or Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting. With these plans, you don’t have to share resources with others on the same server, thus boosting your web hosting speed.
Additional Functionalities
Ideally, you should pick a web host that offers additional features, such as a website builder, a domain-specific email address and expert guidance.
If you’re aiming for success and are hosting your website on Bluehost, you can add Blue Sky support to your plan to get a team of experts that provide long-term guidance.
Bluehost also offers professional SEO, marketing and Pay-per-click (PPC) services.
Affordable Web Hosting Plans
You can always choose the lowest-priced provider on the market, but there’s no guarantee that you’ll enjoy the benefits of web hosting.
Most web hosting services let you choose between shared hosting, dedicated hosting, and VPS hosting.
Shared hosting is when multiple websites share the same server and, thus, the same resources. That is great for basic websites for freelancers or small businesses.
Larger companies often have more webpages; they can opt for Dedicated hosting to get access to a dedicated server that they can customize and optimize as needed.
That is ideal for most businesses, even enterprises.
VPS hosting is similar to dedicated hosting. You get a virtual private server for yourself with full SSD storage.
Bluehost also lets you create stellar WordPress websites via WordPress hosting. If your WordPress website is growing rapidly, you can also opt for our Managed WordPress option to get the latest and best features.
Your web hosting plan dictates how flexible and dynamic your website can be. It also affects your website performance.
If your website has loads of features and plug-ins, then there are higher chances of slow speeds when using a shared server since there are limited resources.
Final Thoughts: Web Hosting Impact on Website Performance
A web hosting company lets you get your website online and ensures it stays up without downtime most of the time.
To truly unlock the benefits of web hosting and get optimum web hosting speeds, you must choose the correct web host right from the beginning. Rather than using a trial and error method, you can opt for a trusted service like Bluehost.
Enjoy high-quality web hosting benefits and avail of high-speed web hosting with Bluehost’s hosting packages today.
