There are so many web hosting services in Ireland that it is difficult for a beginner to choose the right one. On top of that, every company offers discounts, unlimited hosting, unlimited bandwidth and their marketing material is filled with technical jargon that looks great but does not mean much. If you are searching for website hosting Ireland, here are a few tips to help you make the right choice.
First and foremost, you should know that there is nothing called unlimited hosting. Nobody can sustain a business where they provide unlimited resources at a fixed price. Web hosts offering unlimited hosting always have a catch somewhere in their terms. With that said, there are web hosts that offer decent shared hosting plans.
If you do not expect a lot of traffic, a shared hosting plan from a reputed web hosting provider is a good choice. Make sure they are transparent about the restrictions. These typically include restrictions on the number of files you can upload. Even if they mention unlimited bandwidth, make sure to ask customer service if there is a soft limit.
The next thing you need to look at is the speed of the web hosting service. Web hosting speed depends on a lot of factors including the configuration of your website. If everything is fine at your end and still, it takes a lot of time for a web page to load, it is due to throttling on the server side.
Keep in mind that fast loading is not only important for user experience but it also plays a role in search engine optimization. Online visitors do not like to wait too long to for a web page to load. If your website is slow, they will quickly go to another website to find what they want.
Security is a big issue these days. If the server is not configured properly, it might allow hackers to get access to your website and use your website to spread malware or other harmful files. Reputed web hosts have technical experts who keep the servers secure. They also perform regular security checks to prevent any unauthorized access.
Customer service is extremely important in the web hosting industry and many cheap hosts in this industry are notorious for promising the moon but they are nowhere to be found when you need to reach someone in the customer service team. If your website is down or you are not able to upload files or not able to send emails or you have some other issue, you should be able to sort it out by getting in touch with customer service. Reputed web hosting services in Ireland provide good customer service. They offer access to the customer service team through phone, emails, or chat.
WordPress currently powers more than 40% of websites on the Internet. Chances are you are going to use WordPress for your website. If that is the case, you need to make sure that the web hosting you are planning to choose offers support for all the plug-ins you are going to use on the web host.
There are many web hosts that do not allow the use of certain WordPress plug-ins on their shared hosting plans due to reported vulnerabilities or other issues. For instance, caching plug-ins are not allowed by certain web hosts but caching is important to provide a good user experience. Similarly, some web hosts have compatibility issues with other popular WordPress plug-ins.
In case you are going to use another solution such as an e-commerce script, make sure it is compatible with the web host. If there are any doubts, get in touch with customer service and make sure they provide written confirmation about the use of certain plug-ins or certain scripts on your web hosting plan.
As far as the cost of hosting is concerned, shared hosting is usually the cheapest. Other types of web hosting options include virtual private servers, dedicated servers as well as cloud hosting. Virtual private servers or dedicated servers are an expensive option and usually, these are meant for websites that get a lot of traffic each day. The important thing is price transparency. It is recommended to choose a web hosting service that allows you to pay on a monthly basis and does not tie you up in an expensive contract.
Check the terms of the web hosting service. Make sure they promise a 99.99% SLA-based uptime. It simply means that they will provide a refund or credit your account in case they are unable to provide 99.99% uptime.
Backups are an important part of a web hosting service. Ideally, you should keep your own backups. If you are using WordPress, there are several ready-made solutions that allow you to take a backup and upload it securely to another service on a regular basis. It could be a daily or weekly backup.
Most reputed web hosting services also offer regular backup plans. They take a backup of your website every single day and allow you to restore that backup in case of an issue with your website.
Most websites do not get a lot of traffic in the first few months as it takes time to build a good reputation. Once you start getting quite a bit of traffic, the web host should allow you to easily scale up without the need to move to a different service. Simply put, scaling up should not be too difficult.
If you run a business that gets temporary traffic boosts due to viral social media posts, you need to make sure that your web host allows you to quickly scale up the infrastructure to be able to handle that traffic spike. Also, you should be able to scale down web hosting resources once you do not need them any longer.
Once you have decided on a few web hosting services, you should carefully go through their reviews on popular review websites. Make sure they have an excellent reputation. In addition to review websites, you should also check user feedback on popular web hosting forums and groups on social media.
Reputed web hosting services typically maintain a presence on popular social media platforms and web hosting discussion forums. Usually, they respond to any customer complaints on these forums. Go through the discussion on such forum threads to get a better idea of their customer service.
Overall, there are a lot of companies offering website hosting services in Cork, Kerry, Dublin, and Ireland at various price points. You should make sure they are compatible with the scripts you plan to use on their servers. Do not forget to check their customer service response time, availability of technical support, uptime guarantee, scalability and other factors discussed above to get the best value for your money.