Moving a website, storage, and email into the cloud can certainly seem like a daunting task for many companies that do not really know much about what “transitioning to the cloud” really means. The cloud offers a wealth of wonderful benefits that help to make it one of the best choices for hosting. It can reduce the need to have a large team of in-house IT personnel, you will not have to keep servers onsite, and it can cut your costs substantially. It’s a fantastic option, and it is one that many companies today are considering.
Business owners who work with a cloud hosting service love that it can help them streamline the business so they and their employees can work on actual business matters instead of running and upgrading a site all the time. The hosts can take care of backup, upgrades, support, maintenance, and security. Simply put, the cloud makes things easier.
Of course, with the attention that the cloud is getting, it means that there are quite a few different cloud hosting services out there today. The proliferation of these companies means that it’s often difficult for companies to know which one of the providers they should choose. While there are plenty of great options out there, some aren’t quite up to par. In this article, we’ll look at some of the tips to ensure that you are getting a reliable and trustworthy service.
Tip #1: Know the Services
First, you need to know what your needs will be. What do you need to have the host be able to provide, and what do they offer? Some companies have cloud-based storage options for hosting photos, documents, and more. Others are full webhosts that can handle everything for you. Make sure that you look into exactly what type of services the companies you are considering have to offer, and make sure that they match up with your needs.
Tip #2: Know Your Budget
Before you can choose a hosting service for your site or storage needs, you have to consider just how much you are able to afford. This will be one of the largest factors when it comes to choosing a host. Talk with the company about their pricing structure to see what it will cost you over the course of the year. If a company tries to charge a substantial amount of upfront costs, a good tip is to walk away from that company. Try to find companies that have a pay-as-you-go option and that are very transparent about the total costs.
Tip #3: Make Sure Security Is a Top Concern
You have to realize that security is a huge consideration for any website today. This means that when you are choosing your cloud hosting service, this needs to be a top concern. They need to be able to offer high-quality security and safety for all of your data in the cloud. Some of the things to look for include malware and hack detection, antivirus, data encryption, and user authentication. Additionally, those who work in certain fields need to have added measures of security. For example, healthcare companies need to comply with HIPAA requirements. This is the Health Insurance Portability and Protection Act, and it ensures protection of patient data. This means that the hosting service chosen by the company needs to comply with these requirements.
Tip #4: Know the Data Center Locations
Another element of safety and security actually comes from the physical location of the data center. You never want to work with a company that has just a single location – redundant sites with backup data are always a better solution. This ensures that if something were to happen to one of the locations, your site will still be up, running, and available thanks to the other servers. Additionally, the buildings that house the servers need to be secure so people cannot simply break into them.
Some good questions to ask a potential hosting service would be just what they would do if a fire or flood damaged their server location? Any type of natural disaster could destroy servers, so they need to have a backup plan, and it needs to be one that’s actually workable.
Tip #5: Make Sure They Offer Quality Support
Does the company offer any type of support? Any company worth using as a host today will have high-quality support, and most will have around-the-clock support. Know what type of support they offer, and how you can contact them – phone, email, live chat – and what they can to do fix your problems. Will they be available during holidays and on weekends? Your website needs to run 365 days a year, so you should only choose a company that’s able to offer support for 365 days a year.
Of course, just having these offerings is not enough. You also need to ask about the response time. How long will it take from initial contact before you can get someone on the case to help you? The more you learn about the actual support services, the easier it will be to make your decision when choosing a cloud host.
Tip #6: Choose a Scaling Host
Your business will get larger over the years, or at least that’s the goal. This means you need to have a host that’s able to work with your company now, while it is still relatively small, as well as a couple of years from now, when you are taking the world by storm and your number of visitors explodes. Check to see that the host is scalable, meaning that they can grow along with you when you need them to. This is important as you start to gain more visitors, as well as when you start adding more employees to the company. Your cloud hosting service needs to be able to keep up with you.
Tip #7: Choose a Company Offering the Least Downtime
Even when a cloud hosting service takes all the precautions in the world, there’s still a chance that something could happen and that they could experience some downtime. It happens to even the largest and best providers, such as Amazon. Talk with your potential host about the amount of downtime they’ve suffered in the past, and learn how they dealt with it to get things up and running. Ask what they did to make it up to their customers as well. Ideally, you will choose a company that can guarantee uptime of at least 99.9%.
These are just a few great tips to help you on your journey to finding the very best cloud hosing service for your site. Do not simply choose the first company you find or the cheapest company you find. You need to put in the work and dive deep so that you can get the best company for the job. Take these tips and start looking for a fantastic host today.