Like with most things in life, starting and running a blog would require you to make a few important choices, such as choosing your host. You see, everyone touts their hosting services on the web, saying how they guarantee 99.9% uptime (which is mostly just a phrase), knowledgeable support, and unlimited resources. It’s hard to know who’s speaking the truth and who’s just taking you for a ride. But at the end of the day, you’ll need to cut your way across the jargon and find a reliable host for your blog.

Here’s what you must consider when looking for a good blog hosting service

1 The price

The old adage still applies — that you get what you pay for. Things such as quality hardware or outsourced support cost a lot. A hosting plan that only charges $1 wouldn’t give all these features no matter how they would want to lie to you. Instead, when using price as a deciding factor, consider the features they offer, and then determine whether the deal is fair or not.

2 Area of specialty

Not all hosts will offer the same quality of services to everyone. Some hosting companies have very good sharing plans, but lack solutions for a growing business. Some handle large enterprises well, but they don’t offer something for a small recipe-blog owner.

Therefore, go with the company that offers what you want. If you’re not sure, look for reviews on the web to see if they’ll be right for your blogging needs.

3 The tech and the limitation

Take some time and review your site. Is it just a blog, a content-rich portal or something else? The way you present information to the reader determines what you’ll pay. If you pick the cheapest web hosting, you’ll have to grapple with low disk space, RAM and poor processing power. This, equals load issues.

4 Their tech support

You might wake up one morning and find that your site is unavailable. Naturally, you will call support to get help. But can you get a live person to speak to? Can they fix the blog hosting problem, or at least tell you how to rectify it? Confirm with reviews on the web to see if the host you want to choose has a reliable tech support.

5 Extra features

Hosting companies offer more than just servers, so what sets the one you want to choose apart from the other? Is it regular backups, saving the environment or offering the benefit of multiple data centers? All these can be added advantage. So if you come across a company that offers what you need or like, it’s a good sign you should look into it.

6 Hardware

If you’re not tech-oriented in nature, you’ll have to research a lot or even ask questions about the kind of machines they use. Are they using out-of-the-box machines, top of the range machines, or contraptions cobbled together out of what might be chicken wire and spare parts?

They should say which servers they are using. Keep in mind that the type of hardware they use can affect your site’s availability or load time.

7 The Control panel

Things like installing WordPress or setting up FTP accounts can be done without having to make a call for support. But again, is your host using Cpanel or Plesk. If yes, then this is advantageous because these platforms tend to have a user-friendly interface. However, if they’re using a clunky interface, then most likely you’re going to be troubled since you’ll be using it alone, all the time.

Conclusion

The things mentioned above are very crucial when looking for a good blog host. Of course don’t forget about scalability issues. Room for growth is so important because you’ll get more traffic in a few months time — when you start selling your ware. You want your host to be able to handle the growth. If not, then you’ll be faced with the inconvenience of migrating to another host. You certainly don’t want this.