Web hosting is an essential part of an online business, but one that is often overlooked because you tend to take it for granted or don't associate it with the performance of your business. All that you do is pay a certain amount of money to the service provider and move on with your work. Unfortunately, such an overlook can spell disaster for your business. Here are some ways a bad host can affect your online business along with ways on how you can avoid them.

 

Speed of your website or application

All of us want our website or app to have the highest speed for better usability, right? Have you ever associated speed with your web host provider? Probably only when the speed is discernibly slow, right? But, research shows that there is a big relation between the speed of your application and the rate of consumer conversions. Customers would like to get things done at the earliest and move on to the next job and for this, they will always prefer a website or an app that is lightning fast than a slower one. Also, customers will tend to visit your site more often if it is fast and if they can find what they want quickly.

 

Due to these reasons, check the speed of your website often. Even considering talking to your service provider to see if you can upgrade to a better package or possibly even move to a new service provider if the existing one can't meet your requirements.

 

Security

Security is a key aspect given the rate at which hackers and cyber criminals hack into systems to steal the Personal Identifiable Information (PII) of people. If your system stores or handles PII of your customers, your security should be top-notch. Most people tend to beef up their network and will come up with ways and means to make their apps foolproof. But all of this won't give the desired security unless your service provider also has security measures in place.

 

So, check with your service provider to understand the security policies and measures that are in place, especially the ones related to Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks. A good protection against DDoS will ensure that your application is accessible even in the event of an attack.

 

Cost

Another important area is the cost. While this is not the absolute measure, the hosting provider should offer good value for your money. There are many cheap VPS services available today that come with many advanced features such as security and accessibility without breaking your bank.

 

Rate of uptime

Though this may sound redundant, in reality, the uptime of your website or application has a direct impact on your profitability and reputation management. Imagine if your website is down for an hour every day, most people may not want to visit your page, leave alone buying from you. To ensure this, check with your service provider about its uptime policy and see if this is a part of your contract. Consider bargaining for the imposition of a penalty when the uptime rate goes below the threshold, so your web host provider feels responsible to adhere to the contractual obligations to avoid paying a penalty.

 

Monitoring Tools

When a web hosting service comes with built-in monitoring tools, it improves the overall security and performance of your applications. With such tools, it is easy to identify problems and provide a fix at the earliest, in case of any issues. Also, it can act as a good diagnostic tool, thereby giving you insights about the application's performance, based on which you can take measures to improve it.

 In all, a bad web host can affect your business in more ways than you imagine. Instead of brooding over bad performance or the loss of customers, you're better off identifying the causes and addressing the same and one of the first places you should check is your web service provider. Ensure that the provider offers all the basic features required for good performance and more importantly, check if the company is accountable for poor performance as this can be a good motivator for your provider to improve its quality of service.