Finding the Fastest Web Hosting
With every passing day, the internet is becoming more and more entrenched in society. The banking, logistics and commerce industries, among others, are almost completely dependent on the internet today. As a result, the vast majority of businesses have more than one website. In a world that is often likened to a global village, there are thousands of businesses competing for the same group of customers, meaning competition is cut-throat. Having a well-designed website that ranks high on all major search engines is no longer an elective, but a requirement in business.
The ever-critical modern consumer also considers a number of other factors, such as the time it takes for a web page to load, in addition to the quality of the product or service being offered. Finding the fastest web hosting is therefore a necessity in business. The following factors have an effect on the speed of a web hosting service, so be sure to consider them when comparing potential service providers.
Broadband Connection
Do not kid yourself thinking that using a cheap web hosting service which relies on data centers located in a remote part of the world is good for your business. Internet speeds are dependent on broadband connections and bandwidth. In the developed world, you will find hundreds of fiber optic cables connecting a single data center to the rest of the world, meaning complete network redundancy and fast network connection. In a less developed part of the world, you will find one or two fiber optic cables connecting dozens of data centers to the rest of the world. You can expect the speed of data transmission in the latter to be much slower.
The location of data centers used by a web hosting service must therefore be considered. If your target market is located in Asia, pick a service with servers in South East Asia. If you are targeting customers in Europe, pick a company with data centers in a major European city. Similarly, if you are targeting customers in the Americas, you may want to pick a company with data centers in the United States or Canada, and so on.
Server Resources
The speed of a webhosting service depends on a variety of factors including the processing power available resources of the server used. The size of the RAM, numbers of CPU cores, clock speed of the processor and type of storage media used have a big impact on the speed of the hosting service. Ideally, you should use a service with servers fitted with at least 8GB RAM, 8 CPU cores running at a minimum of 3.5GHz, and high capacity solid state drives (SSD’s) for storage.
Hosting Plan
Most hosting firms offer a variety of website hosting plans to suit the needs of the market. Shared hosting services, for instance, are meant for start-ups, marketing websites and blogs, or clients who only need to have an online presence as opposed to impressing potential clients with speed and performance. These plans are cheap but they come with some disadvantages, including reduced privacy, shared IP addresses, reduced storage space and processing power among others.
VPS hosting plans are much more powerful than shared plans, but they still have the same shortcoming of shared servers. Renting a dedicated server is the surest way to offer your clients a superior browsing experience with lightning-fast page loads. However, renting a dedicated server comes with the added cost of maintenance and monitoring.
After looking at all these factors, finding the fastest web hosting service for your websites should not be difficult. All you need to do is read online reviews. There are dozens of websites on the internet containing detailed comparisons of hosting companies and their services. You can easily find the best service provider by simply looking at some of the online reviews and speed ratings offered by third parties.
While speed is an important consideration, be sure to also compare cost and reliability. After all, speed is nothing if the service is unreliable or too costly. Since every hosting company may claim to offer the fastest service, and you may not have enough information to make a well-informed decision, you may want to consider working with hosting firms offering a money-back guarantee. In case you are not satisfied with the speed and performance of the service, you can always demand a refund.