What should you expect from your hosting account?

How do you know if it’s time to upgrade your hosting account (or hosting company)?

Many of us have had the same hosting account for years. By keeping the same account, we may be missing out on opportunities to upgrade to faster servers or to a different hosting company with more hosting features. A faster site can equate to visitors spending more time on your site and more traffic.

Here’s a list of 5 things that you need your hosting account to have. Keep in mind, to have some of these things, you may have to switch hosts or upgrade your hosting account.

1) Daily backups: Your hosting account should be running backups daily and have 30 days of stored backups. They should have an easy way for you to restore your website from one of those backups if something bad happens (hacking). Siteground has this on their GrowBig & GoGeek hosting accounts.

2) SSL/HTTPS: You have to have this. For several years, Google Chrome labels every site without SSL as Not Secure. You can imagine how many of your potential customers will reach out to you if they see Not Secure on your site. Not every host provides an SSL for free. Siteground does.

3) Good 24/7 Support: Most hosting companies have 24/7 support. I’ve added the word “good” because I am currently on hold with GoDaddy and have been for 54(!) minutes. I have one question to ask them and I cannot get them to answer the phone. Support should be easy. You should be able to talk or chat with someone without 54 minute hold times. Do a little research online. Does your hosting company have good reviews? If not, find a new host.

4) Free email accounts: You should be able to create domain emails without having to purchase another product (unless you want to). SiteGround offers free email accounts with hosting.

5) Malware monitoring/prevention: If your host is proactively preventing malware attacks and scanning your site regularly, then you do not need to have other services in place like Sucuri. With SiteGround, their servers have protections in place to help block malicious bots. You can (and should) also add-their on-site scanning. If something does slip through, you can restore your site from one of the saved backups.

I know this sounds like an advertisement for SiteGround … and it is. I don’t work for them or get anything in return for recommending them, but I’ve been working closely with hosts for well over a decade and I have not found another hosting company that gives you the features, speed & service that SiteGround does.

If your hosting package is nearing the end (or even if it isn’t), consider making the switch. Contact me if you need help!