With the increasing popularity of websites, there are a number of Halifax web hosting services that have cropped up. Businesses want to have a strong online presence to expand and grow. Each service provides a host of features, add-ons and tools that you can choose from. But how do you go about choosing the right features for your website? Read on to understand the basic features and know how to choose the best ones for your business website.

Features that are included in a good web hosting service

These are features that most web hosting services offer customers.

• Disk and server space – The service should be able to provide you the right amount of disk space. To know how much space you need, make a detailed file of all that needs to go on the web and calculate the space accordingly. You can ask your service provider for help with these calculations.
• Good bandwidth – Higher bandwidth means that your website loads faster. This is especially important if you have a heavy website with lots of high resolution images and graphics.
• Uptime and downtime – This refers to the amount of time your website is online. if you have an ecommerce website where your customers need to be able to access your website at all times, it is necessary to have an uptime of 99.99 percent, which means your site will be down for less than 8 hours in a year.
• Branded email accounts – This is a mist-have feature for almost any business. A branded email means that your email will have the name of your website as an extension, rather than an unprofessional account like [email protected]
• FTP or usable FileManager access – This allows you to upload content on your computer on to your website. If you have a dynamic website with constantly changing content, this feature is vital.
• Built-in WordPress management – Ensure the host you choose allows for full web application management, and specifically WordPress as it’s the most commonly used software for operating open source websites. Look for automated backup, and update capabilities along with cloning in case you ever want to redevelop your site.
• Choice of operating systems – If you’re going with a VPS, then you should be able to choose between different Linux distributions, though CentOS is usually the best option for a serious high-performance and secure web hosting environment.
• Content management – Content management systems (CMS) is a good feature to have, especially if you have a website that is informational content heavy. Text, image and video content needs to be consistently managed to keep your website look good and running seamlessly.

Understanding what each feature means and how it works can go a long way in helping you understand what should or should not be included in your website.

Take a good amount of time to understand the offering of various web hosting services in Halifax, and across Canada, to ensure that the company you pick can scale your website from shared hosting to VPS hosting in the event your site requires the resources. before deciding on a service. Doing so will help you make a choice that suits your business requirements, and have less to worry about the quality of your online presence.